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The region of South East Asia is almost entirely Buddhist. To account for Islam in Burma is to account for Islam in a Buddhist environment. In our contemporary period, surviving as a Muslim in the Burmese Buddhist environment has become very challenging. The biggest challenge before the Muslim leadership seems to be to learn to fight the common local and international stereotypes propagated against Muslims.

A study on the themes of Buddhist-Muslim dynamics and the uses and abuses of religious themes in contemporary Burmese politics is likely to shed some useful light on this important issue. This paper raises the question that in the face of these challenges whether Muslim leadership should calibrate and keep Muslim identity or it will keep it in tandem with the Burmese in this very unique societal context. Other emerging

questions that as a minority religious ethnic group whether Muslims should understand the elements of Theravada Buddhist culture in cognizance of its own broad range of interests in Burma or following the fatalist view remains isolated within themselves. In addition, one can also ask whether like the prominent Muslim leaders of the past, Muslims should continue to adapt culturally meaningful survival strategies but also develop local roots that are both appropriate and contextual or in the face of challenges just abandon their identity.



Introduction

Islam as a world religion exposed itself to all over the world. It is seen to survive in Christian, Jewish, Hindu and here in Burma’s Buddhist environment. “I saw some Muslims kneel down and pay respect to the

Buddhist monks,” said Pan Cha, a Burmese Sikh businessman who arrived at the Thai-Burmese border in early October after being involved in the September demonstrations. (1) Buddhism is world religion. Majority of its followers populate in Asian countries.



China —102 000 000

Japan —8 965 000

Thailand —55 480 000

Vietnam —49 690 000

Myanmar —41 610 000

Sri Lanka —12 540 000

South Korea —10 920 000

Taiwan —9 150 000

Cambodia —9 130 000

India —7 000

Source: http://www.buddhist-tourism.com/buddhism/buddhism-statistics.html

Section 1: Burmese Muslims

Muslims and Buddhists in Burma lived in relative peace until the beginning of Ne Win’s military rule in 1962. Previous to this there were powerful Muslim advisors worked with Burmese kings and in the recent past there were government Ministers in Aung San’s and also in the U Nu’s cabinet.

(2) When did Muslims begin settling in Burma? How did Islam survive in Burma? What were the causes of its contemporary letdown? It is estimated that Muslims began to arrive in Burma from the 8th century

A.D. (3) Their ancestors arrived to Burma from almost every nationality of the world. The current population of Myanmar Muslims are the descendants of Arabs, Persians, Turks, Moors, Indian-Muslims, Pathans,

Bengalis, Chinese Muslims and Malays who settled and intermarried with local Burmese (4) From “1255-1286, in the first Sino Burman war, Kublaikhan’s Muslim Tatars attacked and occupied up to Nga Saung Chan.

Mongols under Kublai Khan invaded the Pagan Kingdom. During this first Sino Burman war in 1283, Colonel Nasruddin’s Turks occupied up to Bamaw. (Kaungsin) (5) As a result of the various historical forces present in Burma, there developed a Muslim religious ethnic minority which is spread

all around Burma.



The various groups of Myanmar Muslims are:

(1) Panthay (Burmese Chinese Muslims),

(2) The Indian-descended Muslims live mainly in Rangoon.

(3) Muslims of Malay ancestry in Kawthaung, people of Malay ancestry

are locally called Pashu.

(4) Rohingya population is mostly concentrated in five northern townships of Arakanstate: Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Rathedaung, Akyab, Sandway, Tongo, Shokepro, Rashong Island and Kyauktaw. (5)

Despite their history of long settlement and now being indigenous to the land, Muslims are still considered as “foreigners” in Burma. “ . . . violence and discrimination against Burma’s Muslim minority has been commonplace over the last four decades. Islamic leaders in Rangoon believe that attitudes among the predominantly Buddhist Burmese population began to change from tolerance to persecution after General Ne Win seized power in a military coup in 1962. Since then, Muslims have been deliberately and systematically

excluded from official positions in the government and the army.” (6) “Over the decades, many anti-Muslim pamphlets have circulated in Burma claiming that the Muslim community wants to establish supremacy through intermarriage. One of these, Myo Pyauk Hmar Soe Kyauk Hla Tai (or The Fear of Losing One’s Race) was widely distributed in 2001, often by monks, and many Muslims feel that this exacerbated the anti-Islam feelings that had been additionally provoked by the destruction in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. (7)

One of the major Burmese Muslim groups called the “Rohingyas” lately was even declared by the military government as the noncitizens of Burma. (8) Surprisingly, Muslims who only comprise from 5-10% of the population are identified as the #1 enemy of the Burmese people. Questions often asked “why?” Are Muslims the “easy targets?” (9)Are they themselves intolerant to the Burmese culture? It is not easy to answer these questions.

Causes of anti-Muslim xenophobia and genocide

The present research found most observers blame the military for spreading anti-Muslim xenophobia. There are also the others that blame Burma’s Theravada Buddhism’s political dimension, some others identify the

anti-Muslim Hindu fundamentalist influence from India for the problem, while still others blame the “militant Islam” for Muslim’s lack of respect to the Burmese Buddhist environment. In dealing with these problems this paper also raises the question, what Muslims should do to overcome these challenges; whether Muslim leadership should calibrate and keep it in tandem with the Burmese ethnic dynamics or keep their strong and pure Muslim identity in this very unique and hostile societal context. Other emerging questions asked that as a minority whether Muslims should understand the elements of Theravada Buddhist culture in cognizance of its own broad range of interests in Burma. In other words, whether like the prominent Muslim leaders of the past, Muslims should continue to adapt culturally meaningful survival strategies such as educating themselves in Burmese, and at the same time encourage higher education as the strategies of survival.



Problems and the Prospects

The biggest problem Muslims face today is xenophobia. Research shows that it comes originally from the common reactionary stereotypes spread by Western missionaries and the early Hindu Mohashoba fundamentalist campaign in Burma against Muslims during the early part of the 20th century.

Historically speaking, during the British period, we see the penetration of Indian Hindu influence in Burma. Such reactionary alliances launched from India by the fundamentalist Hindus from India for a Hindu-Buddhist alliance against Muslims resulting “from mid 1930s there appeared to be a succinct

polarization between Buddhists and Muslims of Burma, . . . U Ottama, the leading Pongyi activist and friend of India who led the entire Pongyi movement during 1920s, became twice the President of Hindu Mahasabha in 1930s.” Swapna Bhattacharya says, “We should however restrain ourselves to stamp out this revolutionary monk as orthodox and anti-Muslim. He demanded a “closer cooperation between Hindus and Buddhists.” U Ottama was from Arakan.”(10) The stereotype that Islam was instrumental in the destruction of Buddhism in India and in Afghanistan and now a threat to Burma is a major problem Muslims face today. In the face of this, should Muslims keep low profile? Historically speaking, for an ethnic group living in a hostile environment, keeping inactive has always proven to be less effective.

Then should Muslim leadership educate Burmese people of the historical fact that the stereotypes were only myths. Contrary to the myth, one would find that after Asoka, (the Buddhist emperor’s death), it was the rise of Hindu fundamentalism that led to the destruction and massacre of Buddhists in India and in Afghanistan. As a result of this historic event, Indian Buddhists continued to take shelter in Sri Lanka, in China and in South East Asia. (11) .
Surprisingly, the xenophobic mentality has reached to a new height during the colonial period that “Muslims were stereotyped in the society as ‘cattle killers’

(referring to the cattle sacrifice festival of Eid Al Adha in Islam). The generic racist slur of ‘kala’ (black) used against them as the perceived “foreigners” has also negative connotations when referring to Burmese Muslims.(12)

During U Nu’s time Hindu fundamentalist influence in Burma became even greater. “U Nu as the devoted Buddhist was pressured by the wealthy and influential Hindi merchants and the former ordered the prohibition of slaughtering the cattle. Although he relaxed that during the Kurbani Edd (Hariraya Haji), Muslims had to apply the permits for each cattle and strictly follow under police supervision.”(13)

Common themes and strategies for Buddhist-Muslim understanding Muslims in Burma live in Buddhist environment. Despite the rise of a great deal of propaganda and hatred, Muslims should find ways to bridge friendship with their fellow Buddhist citizens. It seems that there is a great deal of resources common among the Buddhists and Muslims. Therefore, the leadership should find Islam’s especially Sufi Islam’s common themes of unity with Buddhism and find ways to interfaith dialogue and involve in local community works and disapprove the present day extremist Muslims strategy of self destruction for the Burmese Muslims.

(1) Dialogue:

This is obligatory to the faithful Muslims because the Quran says, “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (not that you may despise (each other).” (Qur’an, 49:13) It is true,” . . . dialogue with the other requires patience, flexibility and open-mindedness which were clearly revealed in Prophet Muhammad’s dialogue with others even if they were idolaters and this is why Allah praises him,”(14) The Quran says, 
“It is part of the Mercy of Allah that you deal gently with them. Were you severe or harsh-hearted, they would have broken away from about you: so pass over (their faults), . . . ; and consult them in affairs (of moment) . . .”

(Qur’an, 3:159)

(2) Education: It has proven over and again that education and research helps. Muslim leadership should urge its people to educate and inform themselves in both Islam and Buddhist themes and not remain isolated within its madrassa education and within its own community.

(3) Finding similarities: Muslims believe that Allah had sent more than 124,000 prophets to our world. It is possible that the various religions are just the various forms of a common faith with different approaches. “And certainly, We sent messengers (rasul) before you: there are some of them that We have mentioned to you and there are others whom We have not mentioned to you . . .” [Qur’an 40:78] “For We assuredly sent amongst every People a messenger . . .”[Qur’an 16:36](12) It is true, “the word Muhammad is also spelt as ‘Mahamet’ or ‘Mahomet’ and in various other ways in different languages. The word ‘Maho’ or ‘Maha’ in Pali and Sanskrit mean Great and Illustrious and ‘Metta’ means mercy. Therefore ‘Mahomet’ means ‘Great Mercy’.Here are some other links regarding Gautama Buddha’s Prophecy about Muhammad being another Buddha (Maitreya Buddha)”(15) According to Buddhism, “Great compassion makes a peaceful heart. A peaceful heart makes a peaceful person. A peaceful person makes a peaceful family. A peaceful family makes a peaceful community. A peaceful community makes a peaceful nation. A peaceful nation makes a peaceful world.” “ . . . according to Islamic doctrine, there is no problem in establishing peaceful relations with Buddhists. It cited three reasons for this. First, certain modern Islamic scholars have asserted that the Prophet Dh’ul Kifl—the “man from Kifl”—mentioned twice in the Qur’an, refers to the Buddha, with Kifl being the Arabic rendering of the name of Buddha’s native kingdom, Kapilavastu. The Qur’an stated that the followers of Dh’ul Kifl are righteous people. Secondly, al-Biruni and Sehristan, two eleventh century Islamic scholars who visited India and wrote about its religions, called Buddha a “Prophet.” Thirdly, Kashmiri Muslims who settled in Tibet from the seventeenth century married Tibetan Buddhist women within the context of Islamic law. His Holiness Dalai Lama opened the dialogue by explaining that if both Buddhists and Muslims remain flexible in their thinking, fruitful and open dialogue is possible. (16)

Julian Ruth notes “His Holiness Ashin Adissawuntha, the Abbot or Head of Buddhist Monastry of Narathiwa, Thailand visited the Jame Mosque of Narathiwa on last Friday, and meet with Muslim Religious teachers and said that” Buddhists & Muslims have to work hand in hand for PEACE in the world. His Holiness said both Buddhism & Islam are based on Logic and

Reason . . . Lord Buddha said . . . you have to investigate about it and it you find truth in it, than believe it. The Prophet Muhammed also encouraged his followers not to follow blind doctrines but reason, ponder and think and believe. The great Lord Buddha treated human beings as same without any discrimination or race, colour or nationalities and the Prophet Muhammed did the same. The last sermon of Prophet Muhammed can be said “the fist Human right declearation in the histroy of the world”.(17) The similarities between Islam and Buddhism are outstandingly similar.

Buddha’s teaching emphasized on self-enlightenment and self-liberalization similar to Islam’s jihadi Akber, the greater Jihad. Sufi meditation tradition, emphasize the practice of love, compassion and service. Gautama the Buddha and Prophet Mohammed never claimed to be God. Both were rebels and fought against discrimination by the upper class. Both wanted suffering to end but through different methods. The other similarities are that ethics is given priority; compassion is one of most important virtues in both religions. Buddha told the Brahmins and householders of a certain village as follows: “A lay-follower reflects thus: How can I inflict upon others what is unpleasant to me?’ On account of that reflection, he does not do any evil to others, and he also does not cause others to do so” (//Samyutta// 55,7).(18) The Quran says: “And certainly We sent messengers (rasul) before you: there are some of them that We have mentioned to you and there are others whom We have not mentioned to you . . .” [Qur’an 40:78] “For We assuredly sent amongst every People a messenger . . .”[Qur’an 16:36] (4) Survival of the Fittest: While the xenophobic military is to blame for the suffering of ethnic groups including the Muslims, it is also important that Muslims by religion are obliged to know and learn to live in their environment, in this case in the Buddhist environment. Islam says, “read,” “seek knowledge,”“come and learn; you can be what you want to be.” From the above it seems that the old maxim “knowledge is power,” still holds truth for the Muslims of Burma. The main idea should be to learn about “the other’s beliefs and cultures.” Increasing contact and cooperation between Buddhists and Muslims is a necessary condition. In the interfaith dialogue, they should encourage themes that can lead to more understanding between religious groups and avoid tendency toward fundamentalist expressions.

After all, both Muslims and Buddhists are Burmese people and only dialogue can bring peaceful existence. (5) To get rid of the stigma that Muslims are a “dangerous people,” Muslims have to develop their popular news media among the Burmese people and employ effective intellectuals to help them in this democratic and humanistic endeavor.

Struggle for Democracy and Law and Order Suffice to say, the failure of the Muslim community in the South East Asian region in the similar Buddhist environment, such as in Thailand, the Thai Muslims and in Cambodia, the Cham Muslims suffered; the latter in a Buddhist environment faced genocide of near extinction. In Burma, mosques had been attacked by Buddhist monks, there has been genocide going on in Arakan against Rohingya Muslims.(19) Burmese people irrespective of religions “should focus on fighting poverty, diseases, unemployment and bloodshed on its soil and not on destroying relics, which are a living lesson of history.” The research findings will recommend for Muslims of South East Asia to learn to be both competitive, loyal, and at the same time effective. This is more important in a military ruled hostile environment in Burma. Again, the focus should be on education, a regularly held bi-yearly global conference on Muslims of Burma and being informed of both an inward-looking strong tradition based Muslim identity as well as to be a strong Burmese in the outward-looking identity could be one of the most useful survival strategies for Burma’s Muslims and its emerging leadership to adapt Muslims are Burmese People .It is not easy to be a Muslim in Burma despite the fact that “most Muslims are indistinguishable in appearance and behavior from the country’s Buddhists population: they dress the same, wear longyis, speak Burmese, and understand Burmese culture and history.”(20) However, as a result of their common suffering, the Muslim minority of Burma historically has become an ethnic group. In this never ending struggle, it seems that only in a democratic Burma Muslim can have their future and Muslims should fight and utilize every democratic means to promote their survival strategies of peaceful living in Burma. Muslims of Burma should know that their ability to adapt and survive in this Theravada Buddhist environment as the fittest will decide their fate either of survival or extinction.

Section 2:

Rohingya Nation: Contemporary Problems and Making Certain of the Uncertain Future Rohingya people comprise the biggest block of Burmese Muslims. Historically speaking, Rohingya people have been driven out of Arakan in large numbers starting from A.D.1784, 1942, 1978, and 1992. But the worst one is taking place now. In the words of FIDH International Federation of Human Rights: The . . . exodus is a deep, sustained trickle of low visibility. The Rohingyas progressively leave Burma in small groups, families or individuals . . . . Little by little, the population is being forced to leave Arakan because of a deliberate policy of cleansing.” Today over a million people, approximately 200,000 live in Bangladesh, 20,000 in Malaysia and about 700,000 in different Arab countries and smaller numbers in Western countries and in Japan. There are still another 1 and a half million Rohingyas live in Arakan under serious hardship and repression. Burma continues to have anti-Rohingya xenophobic military government. The scenario doesn’t look good. From the times of Sindhi Khan who conquered Arakan, until the time of U Nu Rohingyas lived as a prosperous community in Arakan But today, Rohingyas are at their lowest existence. They are now identified as a stateless people. Rohingyas lost almost everything. But until now what was not lost was the identity—“Rohingya.” Are they presently losing it? Yes, in Bangladesh, it has been a historic trend that Rohingya people to escape repression in Arakan cross the Naff River and try to amalgamate with the Chittagonian people of Southern Chittagong. To escape from the continued oppression, this has been a historic trend by the suffering Rohingya people.

This continued practice of crossing the border to Bangladesh for shelter helped neither them as individuals nor their community to return to their ancestral homes later on to make claims on their properties because Rohingyas once left Arakan never returned back again to Arakan. The few Rohingya returnees to Arakan were almost always identified as Chittagonians and invariably put in jail as foreigners. While in Bangladesh, out of a fear that if they identify themselves as the Rohingyas, they would lose their earned privileges; they preferred to abandon their Rohingya identity. This is not a healthy and creative thing for the Rohingya survival. In their exiles what is needed is that they are needed to keep up their identity alive.

It is my understanding is that Southern Chittagong is almost all inhabited by the Rohingya people. Historically speaking, beginning from 1784 and 1942 and in the later time influxes, helped to the development of about two thirds of the people of Cox’s Bazar district. These were the original Rohingyas of Arakan. In 2007, I met M.A. Habibullah, the famous author of the book, Rohingya Jatir Etihas, who kindly travelled from Cox’s Bazar to meet me in Chittagong city, and I had the privilege to meet him. He said to me that his forefathers were Rohingyas that escaped the 1942 genocide. To strengthen the Rohingya future, Rohingyas like the Rakhines of Southern Chittagong, the latter are already citizens of Bangladesh should do something about Bangladeshi Rohingya identity. This has to be done by the Rohingya leadership as a thought-out plan with Bangladeshi Rohingya sympathesizers to secure Rohingya rights in Bangladesh. The point is if the stranded Biharis can have their rights to be the citizens of Bangladesh, why not the Rohingyas. In addition to the above, there is a large group of up to 700,000 Rohingyas in the Middle East, most live there as Bangladeshis. This anonymous nature of the Rohingya existence has to be removed and Rohingyas has to identify themselves as the members of the Rohingya nation. With this change, they will enjoy more freedom and recognition in Arakan especially in abroad.

It is evident in the Rohingyas in outside Arakan that those who identify themselves as Rohingyas get more privileges. I am almost certain that the identity of a Rohingy nation and its recognition by Arab/ Muslim nations will give the Rohingyas in the Middle East and elsewhere more advantages. Advocate Nurul Islam (U.K.) and U Mohiuddin of New York and the other capable leadership who have contacts with Arab Organizations should work in this direction. To me, Rohingyas lost their country but they still have their national identity, the Rohingya nation. There are complains of Fascist and fundamentalist superficial elements in the leadership. If it is true and Rohingyas continue to lose this due to the weakness in their leadership, like in the past Rohingyas will risk losing everything. It seems to me that to the Rohingya people, the identity Rohingya nation is their only survival design. If there is any hope of returning to Arakan, the identity Rohingya nation as a survival mechanism can only help them to return to their ancestral homeland or at least in future will help them to see the unfolding of a much better future than what is presently now for the Rohingya people that are scattered around the globe. The spirit of Rohingya nation has to be kept alive not through the blame game and reiterating the hopelessness but through involving young leadership with the experienced ones and through initiating creative workshops, and yearly conferences. This should be done by the leadership both inside Arakan and in abroad. Once initiated this continued intellectual process will slowly undermine division in favor of consensus among the people of the Rohingya nation.

REFERENCES

(1) http://www.bmnetwork.org/bmc/index.php?option=com_content&task= view&id=132&Itemid=2

(2) Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Burma

(3) Ibid

(4) Ibid

(5) Ibid

(6) Crackdown on Burmese Muslims, Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper,

July 2002 http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/burma-bck3.htm

(7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Burma

(8) About the Rohingyas, Human Rights Watch/Asia, “Burmese Refugees in

Bangladesh: Still No Durable Solution,” May 2000.

(9) ‘Easy Targets: the persecution of Muslims in Burma,’ Karen Human Rights Group, May 2002; Muslim Quarter in the heart of Maungdaw town ordered to vacate, Rohingya Times, July 16, 2003.

(10) Swapna Bhattacharya (Chakraborti), Islam in Arakan: An interpretation from the Indian perspective: History and the Present. 2006.

(11) Why did Buddhism disappear from South Asia? Brahmin atrocities that destroyed Buddhism in the Subcontinent, Posted on February 3, 2008 by Moin Ansari http://rupeenews.com/2008/02/03/why-did-buddhismdisappear- from-the-south-asian-subcontinent-summary-of-brahmin-atrocitiesthat- destroyed-buddhism-in-the-subcontinent/; I M A G E S A S I A,

PART 1: REPORT ON THE SITUATION FOR MUSLIMS IN BURMA

http://www.ibiblio.org/freeburma/ethnic/rohingya1.txt; Abid Bahar,

Tagore’s Paradigm Exposed in “Dalia” News from Bangladesh, 2008

http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidDate=2008-06-03&hidType=HIG hidRecord=0000000000000000202967 ;

http://thubtenchodron.org/InterreligiousDialogue/islamic_ buddhist_dialogue.html;Michael Young says “Afghanistan has been a Muslim country for only a slightly shorter period than Egypt. The Taleban claim that the age-old Buddhist monuments are “an insult to Islam”. Yet until now no regime in the country’s well over a thousand years of Muslim rule has sought to damage or destroy Afghanistan’s priceless, pre-Islamic cultural heritage.” “When Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (raa) conquered Jerusalem, he refused the opportunity to offer salat within the walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for fear that some ignorant Muslims after him might claim the church and convert it into a mosque because he had once prayed there. He left the church with its icons and works of Christian religious art intact. Michael Young, The Latter-Day Kharijites of Kabul March 3, 2001;

http://sanooaung.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/photos-of-antimuslim- riots-in-bagopegu/

(12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Burma; REPORT ON THE SITUATION FOR MUSLIMS IN BURMA

http://www.ibiblio.org/freeburma/ethnic/rohingya1.txt

(13) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Muslim_Congress.

(14) Shahid Khan mail2shahid@gmail.com, mail2shahid@gmail.com, June 30, 2008”

(15) Buddhist Muslim Unity Association, Was Prophet Muhammad a Buddha? Edited from the book, MUHAMMAD IN PARSI, HINDOO AND BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES by A.H.Vidyarthi & U.Ali. Common virtues of Buddhism and Islam

http://sanooaung.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/common-virtues-ofbuddhism-

and-islam/

(16) http://thubtenchodron.org/InterreligiousDialogue/islamic_buddhist_dialogue. html; Link: Dalai Lama http://thubtenchodron.org/InterreligiousDialogue/ islamic_buddhist_dialogue.html

(17) Julian Ruth, Buddhists and Muslims work together for the PEACE in World Monday, May 8, 2006 11:58:56 AM

(18) http://biblia.com/theology/buddhism7.htm

(19) Abid Bahar, “Xenophobic Burmese Literary Works—a Problem of Democratic Development in Burma.” http://www.rohingya.org/index. php?option=com_content&task=view&id=182&Itemid=70 Chapter 2 of Abid Bahar’s book Burma’s Missing Dots-the Emerging face of Genocide in Burma, 2008.

(20) Crackdown on Burmese Muslims, Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, July 2002 http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/burma-bck3.htm Also see Anti-Muslim picture of Monks destroying Mosques in Bago/Pegu in 1997 «http://sanooaung.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/photos-ofanti- muslim-riots-in-bagopegu/



(Adapted from Abid Bahar's Burma's Missing Dots, Xlibris, 2010)

Secretary Clinton On Burma And Aung San Suu Kyi
Interview With Michele Kelemen of NPR
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton


Listen Interview with NPR

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visits Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at her house in Rangoon, Burma, on December 2, 2011 (State Department Photo)


QUESTION: I want to ask you first about just being at the house, Aung San Suu Kyi’s house, where she spent so much time under house arrest. How did it feel for you?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, in one way, it was familiar to me because I had seen pictures of it over so many years, and friends of mine who have had a chance to visit with her have, of course, described the house. On the other hand, it was an overwhelming personal experience for me, because I’ve admired her for so long, and to see where she was unjustly imprisoned, where she had her unfortunate experience of really spending a lot of time alone, which was difficult, but also gave her the chance to think deeply about what she hoped to see for her country.

Last night at dinner, I was talking to her about my long conversation with Nelson Mandela and how he, looking back, had realized that all those very lonely days and nights in prison for him helped him really summon the strength that he – and of course, I feel the same way about her, that she sacrificed so much. And now, she has perhaps another chance to try to see the democracy that she’s believed in and struggled for and sacrificed for come to reality.

QUESTION: She’s now making this transition from democracy activist to politician, running for elections. Have you given her some advice on what politics is all about?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, I think she certainly understands that it’s a rough-and-tumble experience, no matter where one is. But we did talk about the difficulties of not only standing for election, but being elected and having to make compromises. And that would be true in any political process. Democracy really has to be constantly oiled by compromise, and a lot of people think that somehow is less than principled. But if you look at it from a historic perspective, people come into elective offices with many different experiences and ideologies, and you have to work together. She’s fully aware of all of that, but I think it will still be something quite new and challenging for her.

QUESTION: She’s really been guiding, in a way, this step-by-step U.S. rapprochement with Myanmar, and I wonder if you think – did she give you a sense that you guys have gone far enough or did she want you to do more, for instance, exchange ambassadors?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I think she has been very helpful to us as we have designed our engagement, but continues to support the approach we’re taking, as she said publicly in her house today. And we’ve been very clear that we have to see further steps by the government in order to move again. And she has expressed her confidence in how we are proceeding. Obviously, we both want to see significant steps taken by the government, starting with the release of all political prisoners, before we are able to do any more.

But it’s also the testing of the sincerity and seriousness of the new leadership, which is important for her to know, because they are not releasing prisoners for us. They’re releasing it for their own internal decision-making, because they want to be on this path. So that’s helped her a lot about how they intend to proceed, which is on an important piece of information.

QUESTION: Now you’ve met Thein Sein, the president. She seemed to have confidence enough in him, but do you think he can deliver? I mean, he has a government that has a lot of people in that don’t like what he’s doing.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I can’t speak for her. She is the one who has to make her own assessments. But we’re going to be watching. That’s – our measurement is what actually happens – not what is promised or not what is intended, but whether it’s delivered. And we discussed at some length, when I met with him at Nay Pyi Taw, what the next steps needed to be. And there are a lot of small steps that have to be taken that are of significance, but – releasing all of the prisoners, setting a date for the elections, and ensuring that they are free, fair, and credible, having a really comprehensive, well-designed effort to resolve the ethnic conflicts – those are three very big steps that we think have to be taken before we can further engage on a range of issues that we’d be willing to discuss.

QUESTION: I just have to ask you one question about Nay Pyi Taw. What were your impressions about this place? I mean, here in Rangoon, it’s a lively city, but up there, it’s just nobody there. Are you worried that they’re just too isolated from reality?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I don’t know about that. But it’s like a lot of these capital cities that get built in green space areas far from where they used to be. I’ve seen it in several countries around the world, and it always gives you a surreal impression, like is this a set; is it going to be here when I come back tomorrow? But they obviously invested a lot of money and effort in designing their government buildings. They’re looking to host a series of events of regional significance there over the next few years. So as for the business of the government, apparently it’s going to be done, but it’s not a bustling, lively city like Rangoon is, for sure.

QUESTION: So you think Aung San Suu Kyi will manage to live there or work there?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, I think she is disciplined, determined, and they say that – nice meeting with me, (inaudible) when we get there.

QUESTION: Thank you very much for your time.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you.
 
ႏွစ္တႏွစ္ရဲ႕ အစဆုိတာ တဖန္ျပန္သစ္ဆန္းဖုိ႔၊ အားေတြျပန္ျဖည့္ဖုိ႔၊ သႏၷိ႒ာန္သစ္ေတြခ်ဖုိ႔၊ အတိတ္ကအျဖစ္ေတြကုိ အ မွတ္ရဖုိ႔ အခ်ိန္ပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

၂၀၁၀ ကုိ ျပန္ၾကည့္လုိက္ရင္ အခ်ဳိ႕အပုိင္းေတြဟာ အမွတ္ရစရာနည္းလြန္းလုိ႔ ဆံုးရႈံးသြားၿပီး အခ်ိန္ေတြနဲ႔အတူ ကြယ္ ေပ်ာက္သြားပါၿပီ။ ၂၀၁၀ ရဲ႕ပထမဆံုးေန႔ကုိ က်မ ဘယ္လုိျဖတ္သန္းခဲ့လဲ၊ က်မ သတိမရေတာ့ပါ။ သိပ္ၿပီးသက္ေတာင့္ သက္သာေတာ့ရွိခဲ့မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးလုိ႔ ေျပာႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ က်မရဲ႕အိမ္ကုိ ၂၀၀၉ဒီဇင္ဘာလထဲက စျပင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ေနာက္ သီတင္း ပတ္ အနည္းငယ္အၾကာမွာပဲ စည္ပင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးက တားမိန္႔ထုတ္လုိ႔ ျပင္ဆင္မႈေတြ ရပ္လုိက္ရပါတယ္။
က်မရဲ႕ ေရွ႕ေနေတြ တားမိန္႔ကုိျပန္႐ုပ္သိမ္းဖုိ႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနၾကတုန္းမွာ ကတ္ထူပံုးေတြ၊ေစာင္ထူႀကီးေတြနဲ႔ ထုပ္ထားတဲ့ ဘာရယ္မွန္းမသိႏိုင္တဲ့ အရာေတြ၊ ခရီးေဆာင္ေသတၱာအမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးနဲ႔ ေစာင္းေနတဲ့ေမွ်ာ္စင္နဲ႔တူတဲ့ စာအုပ္ပံုေတြအလယ္မွာ က်မ လေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ေနထုိင္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ စာအုပ္စင္ျမင့္ႀကီးတခု၊ စားပဲြမ်ဳိးစံုနဲ႔ အထုပ္စည္းေတြၾကားထဲ ညပ္ေနတဲ့ က်မ ရဲ႕အိပ္ရာကေနေမာ့ၾကည့္ရင္ ကြာက်ေနတဲ့ မ်က္ႏွာၾကက္ကုိ ေကာင္းေကာင္းျမင္ရၿပီး အုိမင္းယုိယြင္းျခင္းနဲ႔ ေဆြးေျမ႕ ပ်က္စီးျခင္းတရားကုိ အခါမ်ားစြာ ဆင္ျခင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ရာသီဥတု ေအးေနရင္ေတာ့ ႁပြတ္သိပ္ေနတဲ့ အခန္းထဲေနရတာ ေႏြးေထြးသလုိလုိ။ ၿမိဳ႕ထဲျပထဲမွာ ေတာစခန္းခ်ေနသလို ဟန္နဲ႔ ေနရတာကလည္း တနည္းေတာ့ စြန္႔စားခန္းေတြ႔ေနရသလုိလုိ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ရာသီဥတုက ပုိပိုၿပီး ပူလာေတာ့ စိတ္ကူး အႏုအလွေတြ ျပယ္သြားပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ျပတင္းအျပင္ဘက္ နံရံမွာ ျငမ္းဆင္ထားတာေၾကာင့္ ျပတင္းေတြ ဖြင့္လုိ႔ မရတဲ့အျဖစ္ေရာက္ၿပီး တညလံုးနီးပါး ပူပူအုိက္အုိက္ ေခၽြးေတြရႊဲလုိ႔ မအိပ္ႏိုင္သေလာက္ပါပဲ။ က်မကုိယ္က်မ က်န္းမာ ေရးေကာင္းလွပါတယ္လုိ႔ မခံစားႏိုင္ပါဘူး။
၂၀၁၀ ရဲ႕ ပထမသံုးလအတြင္း ကာလေတြကေတာ့ ကုိယ္ခႏၶာတင္ သက္ေတာင့္သက္သာ မရွိတာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ စိတ္ လည္း အလြန္အမင္း အလုပ္လုပ္ရတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ပါ။ ယခင္ႏွစ္က အင္းစိန္ေထာင္အတြင္းမွာ က်မအေပၚ ခ်မွတ္လုိက္တဲ့ စီ ရင္ခ်က္အေပၚ အယူခံ၀င္ထားတာနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ က်မရဲ႕ေရွ႕ေနေတြ က်မနဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးဖုိ႔ အခါအားေလ်ာ္စြာ လာၾကပါ တယ္။ က်မအတြက္ ဒီဥပေဒေရးရာ ကိစၥတခုလံုးဟာ သိပ္စိတ္၀င္ စားစရာေကာင္းၿပီး အင္မတန္အေတြ႔အၾကံဳရင့္တဲ့ စြမ္းရည္ရွိတဲ့ ေရွ႕ေနႀကီးေတြဆီကေန အမ်ားႀကီးဗဟုသုတ ရခဲ့ပါတယ္။ က်မေရွ႕ေနႀကီးေတြနဲ႔တကြ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိက ေရစီအဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ရဲ႕ ဥပေဒေရးရာေကာ္မတီအတြက္လည္း က်မ သိပ္ကုိ ဂုဏ္ယူမိပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေကာ္မတီဟာ ၁၉၉၅ က စ လုိ႔ တရားဥပေဒကုိ ထိန္းသိမ္းဖုိ႔နဲ႔ က်မတုိ႔ႏိုင္ငံက ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ အက်ဥ္းက်ခံေနရသူေတြဘက္က ခုခံကာကြယ္ ဖုိ႔ အတြက္ အလုပ္ေတြအမ်ားႀကီး လုပ္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ေရွ႕ေနႀကီး ဦးဉာဏ္၀င္းဆုိရင္ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ရဲ႕ အ လုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ ေကာ္မတီ၀င္တေယာက္လည္း ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့အတြက္ က်မအေနနဲ႔ ျပင္ပႏိုင္ငံေရးေလာကထဲ ဘာေတြျဖစ္ ေနသလဲဆုိတာေတြ သိရွိခြင့္ရခဲ့ၿပီး ပါတီရဲ႕ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ခ်မွတ္ရမယ့္ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ထဲ အတုိင္းအတာတခုထိ ပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါ တယ္။
ႏိုင္ငံေရး႐ႈကြက္ထဲ အင္မတန္အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ ဒီလုိႏွစ္တႏွစ္မွာ ရင္ဆုိင္ရတဲ့ ဉာဏ္ရည္ျမင့္ စိန္ေခၚခ်က္ေတြဟာ က်မ အတြက္ က်န္းမာေရးကိစၥေတြထက္ အဆေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ပုိအေရးႀကီးပါတယ္။
ဧၿပီလလယ္ ျမန္မာႏွစ္သစ္ကူးခ်ိန္ေလာက္မွာပဲ တရား႐ံုးက အိမ္ျပင္တာကုိ ဆက္လုပ္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း အမိန္႔ခ်မွတ္လုိက္ပါ တယ္။ အလုပ္သမားေတြ ျပံဳေရာက္လာတာနဲ႔ ျပင္ပကမၻာကအသံေတြ လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြနဲ႔ အဆက္ျပတ္ေနတဲ့ သီးသန္႔ ျခံ ၀င္းဟာ ေန႔ခ်င္းညခ်င္းပဲ အဆက္မျပတ္ ဆူဆူညံညံ လႈပ္လႈပ္ရွားရွားရွိတဲ့ ေနရာ ျဖစ္သြားပါေတာ့တယ္။
လုပ္စရာေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။ အဓိကလုပ္ငန္းက ေခါင္မုိးျပင္ဖုိ႔ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏွစ္နဲ႔ခ်ီၿပီး မုတ္သုန္လေတြမွာ က်မ ေမြ႔ရာ (အိပ္ေနရင္ က်မပါ) ေရမစုိေအာင္နဲ႔ ယုိလာတဲ့ မုိးေရကုိ ခံႏိုင္ေအာင္၊ ခုတင္နဲ႔ ခြက္ေတြ၊ ဇလံုေတြ၊ ပံုးေတြကုိ ခက္ခဲတဲ့ စစ္တုရင္ပဲြတပြဲ ကစားေတာ့ အ႐ုပ္ေတြေရႊ႕ရသလုိ လုိက္ေရႊ႔ေနရပါတယ္။ အခုေတာ့ ေခါင္လံုေအာင္ လုပ္ႏိုင္ေတာ့မွာပါ။ ေနာက္တမုိးကုိ စိတ္ေအးလက္ေအးနဲ႔ က်မ ေစာင့္ေမွ်ာ္ႏိုင္ပါၿပီ။ ျမန္မာစကားမွာ “ေခါင္လံုတယ္”  ဆုိတာ လံုျခံဳျခင္းကုိ ေဖာ္က်ဴးတဲ့ အလကၤာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ထိပ္ဆံုးကသာ ေကာင္းရင္ တဗိမာန္လံုး ေကာင္းမယ္ဆုိတဲ့ အျမင္ကုိ ထင္ဟပ္တဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ပါ။

ျပဳျပင္၊ ထိန္းသိမ္း၊ ျပင္ဆင္တယ္ဆုိတာ ေနာင္ကာလမွာ ႐ုပ္ပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ အဆင္ေျပမႈနဲ႔ သက္ေသာင့္သက္သာ ရွိမႈေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးရေတာ့မယ္ဆုိတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ရပါတယ္။ သို႔ေပမယ့္ ႐ုပ္၀တၳဳဆုိင္ရာ ကိစၥေတြထက္ က်မအတြက္ ပုိအေရးႀကီး တာက လူေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္သြယ္ ဆက္ဆံလာႏိုင္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ငါးလေလာက္ ၾကာျမင့္တဲ့ အိမ္ျပင္ခ်ိန္ကာလ (ဧၿပီကစၿပီး စက္တင္ဘာမွာ ၿပီးပါတယ္။ ၾကားထဲ သံုးပတ္ေလာက္ ခဏ ရပ္နားပါတယ္) မွာ ေန႔စဥ္ေန႔တုိင္း က်မတုိ႔ အလုပ္သမားေတြရဲ႕ ဘ၀ေတြနဲ႔ သူတုိ႔ေသာကေတြနဲ႔ အကၽြမ္း၀င္ခြင့္ရခဲ့ပါ တယ္။ က်မတုိ႔ႏိုင္ငံက အလုပ္သမားထု ရင္ဆုိင္ေနရတဲ့ အခက္အခဲေတြကုိ ပုိမုိနားလည္လာၿပီး၊ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ နဲ႔ ဆႏၵကုိ ပုိမုိရွင္းရွင္းလင္းလင္း သိျမင္ရပါတယ္။
အိမ္ျပဳျပင္တဲ့ စီမံခ်က္ရဲ႕ ေနာက္ဆက္တဲြ အက်ဳိးဆက္တခုကေတာ့ အထူးသတင္းတပ္ဖဲြ႔နဲ႔တကြ အိမ္၀င္းလံုျခံဳေရး အ တြက္ တာ၀န္ယူထားတဲ့ အျခားတပ္ဖဲြ႔ေတြနဲ႔ မၾကာခဏ ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးရတာပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ လူေတြ၊ ေဆာက္လုပ္ေရး ပစၥည္းေတြ ျခံထဲသြင္းဖုိ႔ ေန႔စဥ္လုိလုိ ေဆြးေႏြးညႇိႏႈိင္းေနရပါတယ္။ႏွစ္ဦးႏွစ္ဖက္စလံုးက အက်ဳိးအေၾကာင္းသင့္ျမတ္တာ၊ ေပ်ာ့ေပ်ာင္းလုိက္ေလ်ာတာေတြနဲ႔ အတားအဆီးေတြကုိ ေခ်ာေမြ႔ေအာင္ လုပ္ႏိုင္တယ္ဆုိတာလည္း က်မတုိ႔ ေတြ႔လာခဲ့ရ ပါတယ္။
၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ဟာ က်မအိမ္အတြက္ ေျပာင္းလဲတုိးတက္မႈေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး သယ္ေဆာင္လာခဲ့တဲ့ ႏွစ္ပါပဲ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ က်မတုိ႔ ျပည္သူေတြ ေနထုိင္ေနၾကရတဲ့ က်မတုိ႔တုိင္းျပည္မွာေရာ ဘာေတြ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲခဲ့သလဲ ဆုိတာကေတာ့ ေနာင္တခ်ိန္ ျပန္ေျပာၾကရမယ့္ ပုိေလးနက္တဲ့ ပံုျပင္တပုဒ္ ျဖစ္ေနပါလိမ့္မယ္။
က်မ လြတ္လာၿပီး ပထမဆံုးေရးျဖစ္တဲ့ ဒီေဆာင္းပါးကုိ က်မက အခုလုိအဆံုးသတ္ခ်င္ပါတယ္။ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ အႏွစ္ႏွစ္ဆယ္ လံုးလံုး က်မကုိ ေထာက္ခံမႈနဲ႔ ခင္မင္မႈေပးခဲ့တဲ့ မာအိနိခ်ိရွင္ဘြန္းကို က်မ ေက်းဇူးတင္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာရင္း၊ က်မ ခင္ပြန္း အထူးႏွစ္သက္ခဲ့ၿပီး၊ အျမဲရွင္သန္ေနမယ့္ ပညာအျမင္ေၾကာင့္ က်မကုိယ္တုိင္လည္း ႏွစ္သက္ရတဲ့ ကဗ်ာတပုဒ္က ေကာက္ႏႈတ္ခ်က္ကေလးကုိ က်မရဲ႕ စာဖတ္ပရိသတ္ေတြနဲ႔ မွ်ေ၀ခ်င္ပါတယ္။
မေန႔ကဆုိတာ
အိပ္မက္မွ်သာ၊
မနက္ျဖန္ဆုိတာ
စိတ္ထဲကပံုရိပ္အလား၊
ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီေန႔ကုိသာ
ေကာင္းေကာင္းေနသြား၊
မေန႔ကတုိင္း
ၾကည္ႏူးစရာ
အိပ္မက္ျဖစ္သလုိ၊
မနက္ျဖန္တုိင္း
ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ျပည့္တဲ့
ပံုရိပ္ျဖစ္မယ္၊
ဒီေန႔ကုိသာ
ေကာင္းေကာင္း
ၾကည့္ေနသြား။
(The Salutation to the Dawn based on Vedic Hymn မွထုတ္ႏႈတ္သည္)
ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္


(၁-၁-၂၀၁၁ ေန႔ထုတ္ Mainichi သတင္းစာတြင္ ဂ်ပန္ဘာသာ၊ အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာတုိ႔ျဖင့္ ေဖာ္ျပၿပီး)
ျပည္သူ႔ေခတ္ဂ်ာနယ္ အတဲြ ၂ အမွတ္ ၇၁ မွ ကူးယူတင္ဆက္သည္။
“ကၽြန္မတို႔ အတူတကြ ေရွ႕ဆက္တိုးတက္ႏိုင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ဆီ သြားမယ့္လမ္းကေန ေနာက္ျပန္ဆုတ္စရာအေၾကာင္းမရွိေတာ့ဘူးလို႔ ယံုၾကည္ပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမဲ့ ခုထက္ထိ အဲဒီလမ္းေပၚ ကၽြန္မတို႔ မေရာက္ေသးပါဘူး”(ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္)

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ ဒုတိယအႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ေတြ႕ဆံုမႈအၿပီး အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္က ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို “ ခိုင္မာၿပီး အလြန္ရွင္းလင္းျပတ္သားေသာ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မႈအတြက္ ေက်းဇူးတင္ေၾကာင္း” ေျပာၾကားၿပီး အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုသည္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္း အေျခအေနမ်ား တိုးတက္ေကာင္းမြန္ေရးႏွင့္ အစိုးရႏွင့္ေရာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကဲ့သို႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး လႈပ္ရွားသူႏွင့္ပါ ပူးတြဲအလုပ္လုပ္လိုေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကားလိုက္သည္။

ယေန႔နံနက္ပိုင္းက အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္အဖြဲ႕၀င္မ်ား ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ေနအိမ္တြင္ ႏွစ္နာရီနီးပါးေတြ႕ဆံုမႈအၿပီး ႏွစ္ဦးစလံုးကခရီးစဥ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး မီဒီယာသို႕၇ မိနစ္ၾကာ ထုတ္ျပန္ေျပာဆိုမႈတစ္ရပ္ျပဳလုပ္ရာတြင္ အထက္ပါအတိုင္း ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

“ကၽြန္မတို႔ အတူတကြ ေရွ႕ဆက္တိုးတက္ႏိုင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ဆီ သြားမယ့္လမ္းကေန ေနာက္ျပန္ဆုတ္စရာအေၾကာင္းမရွိေတာ့ဘူးလို႔ ယံုၾကည္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ခုထက္ထိ အဲဒီလမ္းေပၚ ကၽြန္မတို႔ မေရာက္ေသးပါဘူး” ဟု ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ေဒါ္ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ဆက္လက္ၿပီး ျမန္မာအစိုးရႏွင့္ အေမရိကန္ ထိေတြ႕ဆက္ဆံမႈကို အလြန္တန္ဖိုးထားေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ားအားလံုး လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးစုျပႆနာမ်ားရပ္တန္႔ေရးကိုလည္း ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့သည္။

ဟီလာရီခရီးစဥ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကေျပာၾကားရာတြင္ ဟီလာရီးခရီစဥ္သည္သမိုင္း၀င္ ခရီးစဥ္တစ္ခုျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ အေမရိကန္အစိုးရကိုေက်းဇူးတင္ရွိပါေၾကာင္း၊ လက္ရွိကန္အစိုးရ၏ေစ့စပ္မႈသည္ စစ္မွန္ေသာေစ့စပ္ေဆြးေႏြးမႈတစ္ရပ္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ျပည္တြင္းတြင္ တရားဥပေဒစိုးမိုးေရးသည္အေရးႀကီးေၾကာင္း စသည္ျဖင့္ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။

အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ုပ္ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္အဖြဲ႕၀င္ျဖစ္ေသာ ဦး၀င္းတင္က ဟီလာရီႏွင့္ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြး ေႏြးမႈႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး “ဟီလာရီရဲ့တံု့ျပန္မႈေတြကိုအားရေက်နပ္ပါတယ္။ သူေျပာတဲ့စကားေတြက ကတိက၀တ္ သေဘာေဆာင္တယ္။ ဥပမာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားေတြလႊတ္ေပးေရးတို့၊ တိုင္းရင္းသားကိစၥေျဖရွင္းေရးတို့မွာ ကတိက၀တ္ျပဳေျပာဆိုသြားတာေတြကို အားရေက်နပ္ပါတယ္” ဟု ေတြ႕ဆံုမႈအၿပီးသတင္းေထာက္မ်ား၏ ေမးျမန္းမႈကိုေျဖၾကားသည္။

Credit : 7Day News Journal



Inside Story with presenter James Bays discusses with guests: Maung Zarni, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics; Richard Weitz, a Senior Fellow and the director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at Hudson Institute; and Maitrii Aung-Thwin, an assistant professor of Southeast Asian History at the National University of Singapore.

It is something many expected never to see, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, setting foot in Myanmar. It is the first visit by a US secretary of state in more than 50 years.

Barak Obama, the US president, said he sanctioned the visit - because of what he described as "flickers of progress" by Myanmar's new leadership.

Recent reforms in the country - the release of some political prisoners, the easing of press restrictions and the lifting of a ban on trade unions - have surprised many observers.

Analysts say Clinton's trip comes at the time when the US is turning its focus to Asia, a move that is widely seen as an effort to counter Chinese influence in the region.

In this show we ask: Will Clinton's trip encourage Myanmar's rulers to continue down the path of democracy? Do the reforms in the long-isolated country indicate a real willingness to change or are they just window dressing? What are the challenges ahead?

Credit :Aljazeera News

By Dr.Maung Zarni

The military leadership in the country has never been keen on a lasting peace with ethnic resistance movements.

London, UK - In his Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Karl Marx wrote: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Such an assessment is only half-right when it comes to Myanmar's internal conflicts, of which ethnicity is of equal importance to class. Whether ethnicity is largely a matter of "political choice", as many academics suggest today, has little relevance in the lives of these ethnic peoples. The Karen, the Kachin, the Mon, the Shan, the Karenni and other ethnic groups have chosen to hold on to their AK-47s or M16s to continue their fight. The unappealing alternative is surrender and subjugation at the feet of their uncompromising enemy in Rangoon and, since 2005, Naypyidaw.

With varying degrees of ferocity, intermittent waves of ethnically mobilised wars have flared up since independence in 1948. Most of these were triggered by the non-Bamar communities' perception and experience of being denied a fair share of state power and control over resources by the Bamar-dominated governments, both civilian and military. Like the colonial Burma, the military-ruled Myanmar is in effect a garrison state; unlike British Burma, the generals' Myanmar remains so after a half-century of their monopoly rule. Under the Raj, Burma was the lucrative "rice bowl of the world", exporting nearly half of the total global output; the Myanma generals, on the other hand, have succeeded in turning Myanmar into the region's "basket case", worse off than post-genocide Cambodia.

Suu Kyi's NLD party reentering politics
Whether under General Ne Win or Senior General Than Shwe, the military leadership has never been keen on just and lasting peace with ethnic resistance movements, always attempting to dictate the terms of the "peace". In 1963, a year after the military coup that laid the foundation for military rule, Ne Win launched a series of highly publicised, but half-hearted "peace talks" with non-Bamar resistance groups, as well as the armed Bamar communist movement. When little came of these, Rangoon adopted a zero-sum policy of "annihilation" towards any dissent. Just a year ago, Gen Than Shwe reiterated the military's institutional mission - not of peace and reconciliation, but rather of the reconsolidation of the central government's power vis-à-vis the non-Bamar ethnic communities, the power that was presumably fractured by the century-plus interval of British rule. "I would like to urge you to build on the national reconsolidation that has been achieved," he told the graduating class of a military medical academy, "and avoid all thoughts and notions that might lead to the disintegration of the union".

Consequently, some 60-plus years after independence, the armed conflicts still smoulder. The anti-Naypyidaw armed resistance organisations - 21 as of January 2011 - vary significantly in both size (from 500 to 30,000 troops) and degree of political significance. The expansive conflict landscape encompasses Myanmar's Kachin highlands below Tibet, the 200-mile stretch of landlocked Pegu Yoma; from the Chin Hills due east from Mizoram and the Arakan Yoma that divides the Rakhine coastal region from the rest of Myanmar's; the Wa Hills near the Sino-Shan frontier and the Naga Hills across from Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland to the northwest.

Furthermore, the ethnic armed groups - including the Shan State Army, the Karenni National Progressive Party, the New Mon State Party, and the Karen National Union - continue to dot the nearly 1,500-mile-long Thai-Myanmar border, from the Shan plateau in the east and the tiny Karenni state bordering northern Thailand, down to the Karen trans-Salween River region adjacent to the Thai provinces of Tak and Kanchanburi and the 500-mile Tenasserim coastline.

"Upon independence, the non-Bamar communities... found themselves being released from the clutches of the British Raj into the grip of the dominant Bamar nationalists."

Upon independence, the non-Bamar communities (who make up around a third of the population) found themselves being released from the clutches of the British Raj into the grip of the dominant Bamar nationalists. On the eve of independence, the latter promised their minority brethren ethnic equality and cultural and administrative autonomy, as the basis of the independent federated Union of Burma. But the nationalists, both civilian and soldiers, broke this foundational principle for the post-independence Burma. Instead of the agreed-upon federation and a federal Constitution, they were forced to accept a new state and Constitution, which were for all intents and purposes unitary.

The original aims of the armed ethnic groups included secession, an option that the Constitution of 1947 allowed the Shan and Karenni to exercise 10 years after independence, should they become unhappy being part of the Union of Burma. From the 1980s onward, however, new developments in and out of the country forced the anti-Rangoon armed movements to reassess their original missions. Among the external geo-political equations that helped to sustain the civil war in Myanmar were the west's Cold War-era support for the Burmese military's fight against the armed Burmese communist movement, The politically hostile and commercially predatory policies of Thailand (a historical enemy) towards the country, Beijing's substantial military and ideological support for the Communist Party of Burma during the 1970s, and Burma's domestic black market during Rangoon's failed socialist military rule, and the resultant cross-border smuggling, including one of the world's largest narcotics industry.

The economics of Myanmar's ethnic conflicts are not just about the struggle over controlling means of production, wage disputes and working conditions. In fact, they have a far more ominous dimension; these battles are far more primitive than that. Today, the aspiring capitalist state in Myanmar, under a new generation of generals, wants - perhaps needs - nothing less than complete and effective control over all commercial or strategic lands. Worse still, the problem for the anti-Rangoon ethnic rebels such as the Kachin Independence Organisation and Karen National Union was not simply that external support from Beijing and Bangkok dried up; since the 1980s the crucial neighbourhood powers, namely China under Deng Xiaoping and the Thai military, under Supreme Commander General Chaovalit Yongchaiyudh, decided to court Rangoon for highly lucrative commercial deals in resource extraction, arms sales, crossborder trade, and bilateral strategic and commercial cooperation towards market creation within ASEAN.

Not only do the non-Bamar ethnic regions account for up to 60 per cent of the country's total land area; but as "frontier" states, these lands, where much of the battles have been waged, are strategically and commercially crucial for the new post-Cold War priorities. These areas are also home to much of the country's lucrative natural resources, both above and below ground. It is simply not possible to know where the ideological parameters of the military's nationalism (or for that matter those of the non-Bamar ethnic nationalisms) end and where the desire for control of land and other economic resources begin.

"It is simply not possible to know where the ideological parameters of the military's nationalism... end and where the desire for control of land and other economic resources begin..."

If the absence of clarity among Myanmar's domestic ethno-nationalists is an issue, pro-market external players are crystal clear about their priorities. In the eyes of venture capitalists and corporate investors in London, Paris, Zurich, New York, Tokyo, Seoul and so on, or development agencies such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), EU and EU-based development agencies, Myanmar's war zones have come to be seen as strategic yet virgin lands waiting to be penetrated by international business interests. Meanwhile, ASEAN is determined to transform itself from the region's Cold War-era, anti-Communist China bloc to a pro-market competitor of the emerging state-run capitalist system of China. As the largest mainland southeast Asian land-bridge between south and southeast Asia, Myanmar is indispensible for ASEAN as it pursues its grand commercial design.


It may not be going too far to suggest that the commercial stakes are too high for these external players to allow Myanmar's conflict-ridden communities such political luxuries as peace, ethnic reconciliation, basic human rights and some semblance of popular sovereignty. For instance, over a quarter century, a projected $550bn (according to the Asian Development Bank) would change hands in the ongoing scheme of the ASEAN alone, backed by an assemblage of Western institutions to create a single energy market across much of Southeast Asia. In the new single energy market, electricity would be generated in a least-industrialised economy such as Myanmar's, and exported to the fast industrialising economies of China and Thailand. Imagine the windfall from the two-dozen similar schemes currently under discussion.


Ethnicity and guns

For the past two centuries at least, Myanmar has been seen as a strategic venue by outside powers, from Europe to Japan to the US. For outside powers, the country has always been a commercial backdoor to China and India, for mainland Southeast Asian economies, a military launching pad for fascist Japan, a mid-point safe harbour for the mercantilist European powers, a lucrative resource stash for everyone and a virgin export market. From its inception in the military coup of 1962 till the collapse of Ne Win's dictatorship in 1988, Rangoon's military regime fenced off those territories under its direct control and fought myriad ethnic independence-seekers. In those Cold War days, neighbouring powers such as Thailand, India and China allied themselves or supported these anti-Rangoon forces in exchange for serving the interests of the home capital.

As for the ethnic armed resistance movements, reeling from the unexpected loss of their commercial and strategic advantages resulting from China and Thailand's reversal of their strategies, both legitimate resistance movements (such as the Kachin Independence Organisation) and those that are originally drug producers and traffickers (such as the United Wa State Army), opted for ceasefire deals with Rangoon. Bangkok and Beijing replaced their strategy of using anti-Rangoon rebel groups and their bases as military buffers, and in the case of Thailand as lucrative smuggling zones, to courting the central government in Rangoon. But the Karen National Union, the oldest and perhaps only movement to have stayed clear of the narcotic industry, and several others (the Karenni National Progressive Party, the Shan State Army factions and so on) decided to keep up their armed resistance rather than accept Rangoon's ceasefire offers immediately following the popular uprising in central Myanmar of 1988. They saw the ceasefire as not designed to be a step towards lasting peace and reconciliation, but rather as a part of the junta's longstanding policy of "divide and rule" along ethnic lines.

"... when Ne Win's socialist one-party state collapsed in the midst of near-bankruptcy, every military officer was more than happy to move away from socialism towards capitalism."

The rebels' longstanding ties with the Thai and Chinese governments were quickly cut when it became clear that, post-Cold War, the new focus would be on business. The logic of and zeal for economic growth - and the resultant two-fold needs for reliable flows of natural resources and energy and new consumer markets - has subsequently come to dictate the behaviour and priorities for virtually all national governments. Despite Myanmar's ostensible socialist setup, Ne Win and his deputies never actually trusted any entity, or socialist civilians, other than the military. Thus, when Ne Win's socialist one-party state collapsed in the midst of near-bankruptcy, every military officer was more than happy to move away from socialism towards capitalism. Immediately after the bloody crackdown on the popular uprisings of 1988, the new crop of generals decided to open up the country to international capital as a way of shoring itself up - and filling its empty coffers.

The country's new road to capitalism began with the Myanmar military signing away $120m worth of logging concessions to 35 Thai companies with close ties to the Thai military under Supreme Commander Chaovalit Yongchaiyudh, as early as December 1988. Additional concessions were given away for gems and fishing rights, and facilitating Thai-Myanmar cross-border trade. China was allowed to produce and export over more than commodities designed for Myanmar's markets, while importing teak, minerals, forest and agricultural products from Myanmar. The move to open up the country to international businesses has turned out to be the single most important decision for Myanmar's generals, having since precipitated a major windfall in terms of commercial gains, strategic advantages, new international alliances and class-based politics at home - all to the near exclusive benefit of the military.

The military remained cohesive despite the government collapse of 1988. At that time, the leadership decided to pre-empt any inter-ethnic alliance between an Aung San Suu Kyi-led Bamar ethnic majority in "mainland" Myanmar and about 20 armed ethnic movements across the frontier territories. Between 1989 and 1999, some 17 ethnic resistance groups agreed to ceasefire deals with the junta, reasoning that these agreements would at least bring some development benefits - as well as lucrative personal business for the ethnic leaders.

Three new developments characterise this period for Myanmar's ethnic resistance. First, the loss of military, ideological and material support from their neighbourhood backers, and in the case of the Kachin Independence Organisation some military defeats in the battlefield, had forced some of the staunchest foes of the Myanmar regime, to strike ceasefire deals with Rangoon in the early 1990s. Second, because the deals included concessions for the upper echelons of the resistance leaders to do business in their own areas - and get rich quick - these agreements created and deepened the new class division within the individual ethnic resistance communities. Eventually, this led to a fracturing among these movements, to the regime's strategic advantage. Third, these deals also created two new schisms: between the existing inter-ethnic alliances among the anti-regime forces and between the ceasefire groups and the emerging opposition movement of the majority Bamar, led by Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy.

Since the crackdown in 1988, and after having been condemned and shunned by the West for two decades following the Cold War as a consequence, the generals have successfully primed Western interests in Myanmar's economic and strategic potentials, including those of the country's frontier areas. Thanks to Asian commercial interests and global oil corporations, the regime has succeeded in filling its once-empty coffers with billions of dollars. Apparently, Naypyidaw has decided that it is in its best interest to invert its strategic logic in dealing with dissent and rebellion at home. From 1989 till earlier this year, it went on to crush the Bamar mainstream opposition while neutralising the non-Bamar ethnic armed movements with temporary ceasefire deals.

Now, the generals have decided to zero in on any ethnic resistance groups, ceasefire or active, that refuse to accept peace on Naypyidaw's terms. In August 2009, the Burmese military attacked the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance in the Kokang region, a local ethnic Chinese ceasefire group, causing the eventual exodus of 30,000 Kokang Chinese refugees fleeing into China. In June 2011, the regime broke the 17 years of ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Organisation by provoking the latter in order to flush any KIO units from the billion-dollar Sino-Burmese hydropower projects on the Irrawaddy River in Kachin region.


New strategies of old


This new strategic logic underlies the regime's moves following the election of November 2010, including the limited political liberalisations that are meant purely for the Bamar majority. The regime's strategic measures both before and after the election were designed to further weaken the non-Bamar ethnic voices and fracture whatever inter- and intra-ethnic alliances that were emerging in the ethnic political scenes. Between 1993 and 2008, the military regime brought ceasefire groups and other non-Myanma ethnic representatives into the National Convention, which laid down the principles and guidelines for the military's Constitution of 2008, with the lure of the "legal" opportunity to present their federalist ideas.

In reality, their concerns and aspirations were uniformly ignored by the military and its handpicked delegates. Further, in the months leading up to the 2010 elections, the regime barred ceasefire groups (and leaders with ties to these groups) that refused to submit to the state military's central command. The regime also disenfranchised a large number of eligible voters in Wa and other ceasefire regions by opting not to hold elections in large tracts of these areas, on grounds of poor security.

"The military today is also replicating the old colonial pattern of divide and rule by preventing any attempts by the Bamar politicians and dissidents to reach out to the non-Bamar."

Historically, the British Raj made sure the lowland ethnic groups, most specifically the Bamar, did not get to form alliances with highlanders in Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karenni and others by restricting the freedom of movement for the Burmese by the ethnic frontiers. The military today is also replicating the old colonial pattern of divide and rule by preventing any attempts by the Bamar politicians and dissidents to reach out to the non-Bamar. Soon after her release from house arrest a year ago, Suu Kyi attempted to reignite popular interest in the multiethnic country's need to build a federal system of government on the principal of ethnic equality. As of mid-November, Suu Kyi has reiterated her offer of help on the issue of ethno-military conflicts, something that Naypyidaw has ignored, even though the ethnic minority groups have publicly welcomed her offer of mediation.

In August, President Thein Sein offered the ethnic armed resistance groups an olive branch, billing his post-election quasi-civilian government as a government for peace and reconciliation. Curiously, he urged all the armed organisations to get in touch with provincial administrations, instead of with the national government in Naypyidaw. This was clearly a move designed to signal the new regime's stance that ethnic peace and reconciliation is merely a parochial and provincial matter. However, the terrains of "peace and reconciliation" are hardly better for the non-Bamar ethnic parties, which have agreed to work within the military's political framework.

A cursory glance at the parliamentary statistics suffices. In addition to the military's Constitutionally allocated 25 per cent of the seats in all legislatures at all levels, the regime's proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development party (USDP), holds 883 of 1,154 parliamentary seats (76.5 per cent); the National Unity Party, the party of military dinosaurs from the previous military government of General Ne Win, came second with 63 seats. The latter's attitude towards the country's non-Bamar ethnic communities is no less colonial and paternalistic than the USDP. Against the regime's near-monopoly of the parliamentary space, the only two ethnic non-Bamar parties - the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP) and Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, with 57 and 35 seats, respectively - have absolutely no chance of their concerns and aspirations being taken seriously, let alone honoured, by the military.

These are indeed exciting days for Myanmar's generals. Having failed to vanquish their nearest enemy with domestic and Western support - namely, Suu Kyi and the NLD - they have now gotten her, along with the country's commercial and technocratic elites, on board Naypyidaw's carefully choreographed market reforms. Meanwhile, anti-Chinese Western and ASEAN commercial and strategic interests are converging nicely in the generals' favour. Since China's attempt to claim much of the South China Sea, ASEAN members, especially the maritime members, have made concerted efforts to help expand the involvement of the West (particularly Washington), in their region as a counterweight against the growing might and wealth of China. Both ASEAN and Washington deem it to be within their converging interests to ensure that Myanmar's generals do not tilt any further towards Beijing's strategic orbit. For the first time since the ethnic rebellions broke out 60 years ago, the military today finds itself in the best position to make peace deals with the non-Bamar resistance organisations. These will be offers the minorities cannot refuse.


Maung Zarni is founder of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004) and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press.


The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.




ဒီဇင္ဘာလ ၂ ရက္ေန ့မနက္ပုိင္းက ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ ့တကၠသုိလ္ရိပ္သာလမ္းရွိ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ေနအိမ္တြင္ ၿပဳလုပ္ေသာ ေတြ ့ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈ အၿပီး အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရး၀န္ၾကီး ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္ႏွင့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္တုိ ့မွ ႏွစ္ဦးႏွစ္ဖက္ သေဘာထား အၿမင္မ်ားကုိ တက္ေရာက္လာေသာ မီဒီယာမ်ားသုိ ့ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္းေၿပာၾကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္ မွ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆံုမႈအျပီး မီဒီယာမ်ားသို႔ေျပာစကား''ကြၽန္မအေနနဲ႔ ေျပာခ်င္တာကေတာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီဆိုတာ ပန္းတိုင္တစ္ခုပါ။ အေမရိကန္ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ အမႇန္တစ္ကယ္ပဲ မိတ္ဖြဲ႕ႏိုင္ငံျဖစ္ခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ကြၽန္မတို႔ အလုပ္ေတြလည္း အမ်ားႀကီးလုပ္ခ်င္ပါတယ္။ အကယ္၍ ဒီထက္ပိုၿပီး ဒီမိုကေရစီနည္း က်င့္သံုးမယ္၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားအားလံုး လႊတ္ေပးမယ္၊ ကာလၾကာရႇည္စြာရႇိခဲ့တဲ့ တုိင္းရင္းသားေရးရာ ပဋိပကၡေတြ အဆံုးသတ္မယ္၊ ၿပီးေတာ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမႇာ လြပ္လပ္ၿပီး တရားမွ်တၿပီး ယံုၾကည္ႏုိင္ေလာက္တဲ့အေျခအေနေတြ ျဖစ္လာမယ္ဆိုရင္ေပါ့။ ေနာင္မႇာလည္း အ ေမရိကန္က အနီးကပ္ ဆက္လက္ၿပီး စစ္မႇန္တဲ့အကူအညီေပးမႈေတြ အႀကံေပးမႈေတြ လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားမႇာပါ။ ႏႇစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာက ျမန္မာက လူအမ်ားေရႇ႕မႇာ ရပ္တည္ဖို႔ ခက္ခဲမႈအေနအထားေတြ ရႇိခဲ့တယ္။ အခုအခ်ိန္မႇာေတာ့ ကြၽန္မတို႔ျမင္ခ်င္တာက ျမန္မာဟာ ကမၻာမႇာ မႇန္ကန္တဲ့ေန ရာတစ္ခုမႇာ ရႇိေနမႈပါ။ ၿပီးေတ့ာ ၿမိဳ႕သာမက ေက်းလက္ေဒသမႇာရႇိေနတဲ့ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈလိုအပ္တဲ့ မိသားစုေတြ၊ ကေလးသူငယ္တိုင္းဟာ ေကာင္းမြန္တဲ့ ပညာေရးေတြေပးႏိုင္ေအာင္ အခြင့္အေရးေတြ ရႇိရမယ္။ က်န္းမာေရး ေစာင့္ေရႇာက္မႈေတြ ရႇိရမယ္။ အေမရိကန္အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာနဲ႔ အေကာင္း ဆံုး မိတ္ဖက္ႏိုင္ငံအျဖစ္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ပါတယ္။ အနာဂတ္မႇာေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားတုိင္းဟာ မႇန္ကန္တဲ့ေနရာတစ္ခုမႇာ ရႇင္သန္ရပ္တည္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ ကြၽန္မတို႔ ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေမွ်ာ္လင့္မိပါတယ္''





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By Akbar Ahmed and Harrison Akins of guardian.co.uk

The Rohingya want only citizenship in their own land, and the dignity, human rights and opportunities that come with it.
    Every breath the young orphan girl took brought pain to her body and tears to her eyes. She had been abused by the family she worked for as a servant – probably sexually molested, according to her doctor, and then, so dishonoured, pushed into a fire to make her death seem accidental. They knew she had no official papers and therefore could not complain to the authorities. She was unceremoniously dumped at the gate of the Lada refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, where doctors in the camp cared for her. Horrible as her case was, the doctors knew she was but one of many similarly burnt young women they would see that month and were realistic about her slim chance of survival, lacking money for food or advanced treatment. Besides the volunteer doctors and other camp staff moved to donate money to buy her eggs or medicine, it seemed no one cared whether she lived or died. Her existence did not matter.
    The story of this young Rohingya girl was told to us by an American colleague who works at Georgetown University after her recent visit to the refugee camp on the border between Bangladesh and Burma.

    The "forgotten Rohingya", whom the BBC calls "one of the world's most persecuted minority groups", are the little-publicised Muslim people historically located in the coastal Arakan state of western Burma, dating their ethnic lineage in this region over centuries.

    When the military junta under General Ne Win, an ethnic Burmese, came to power in 1962, it implemented a policy of "Burmanisation". Based on the ultra-nationalist ideology of racial "purity", it was a crude attempt to bolster the majority Burmese ethnic identity and their religion Buddhism, in order to strip the Rohingya of any legitimacy. They were officially declared foreigners in their own native land and erroneously labelled as illegal Bengali immigrants.

    By officially denying them citizenship, the government institutionalised the long-held and unofficial discriminatory practices in the Arakan State. As a result, the Rohingya have no rights to own land or property and are unable to travel outside their villages, repair their decaying places of worship, receive education, or even marry and have children without rarely granted government permission. In addition to the complete denial of their rights, the Rohingya were subjected to modern-day slavery, forced to work on infrastructure projects which include constructing "model villages" to house the Burmese settlers intended to displace them.

    Since 1991 the steady flow of refugees in Bangladesh reached an astounding number. The non-governmental organisations from Europe and North America put the number at an estimated 300,000. Only 35,000 of these Rohingya refugees live in registered refugee camps and receive some sort of assistance from NGOs. The remaining, more than 250,000, are in a desperate situation without food and medical assistance. Torrential rain and flooding in each monsoon takes a heavy toll in the unregistered and unprotected makeshift camps with the most deplorable and inhumane conditions. Outbreaks of epidemics of waterborne diseases from the lack of sanitation and flooding in the monsoon in the makeshift camps have shocked NGOs and the international community.

    There are many horror stories of the Rohingya who, no longer able to face the utter hopelessness of their lives, set forth on makeshift rafts into the sea. Too many such journeys have been abruptly ended by Thai and Malaysian naval patrols that force these rafts into deeper waters and then leave them to die.

    Because the US has targeted Islamic charitable organisations in order to dry up any possible funding for al-Qaida and other such groups it has caused Muslims to become wary of giving to charity. The normal Muslim sources, that may have helped the Rohingya, have therefore been largely absent. Muslim Aid is one of the only organisations allowed to operate in the camp where the young girl was burned, and they provide the only small and overworked clinic and child feeding programme for thousands of refugees.

    All the Rohingya want is reinstatement of their citizenship in their own land, revoked by the former dictator General Ne Win, and the dignity, human rights and opportunities that come with it. Only then can a democratic Burma be legitimate in the eyes of its own people, the south Asian region, and the international community. Perhaps then the suffering of the young Rohingya girl and so many like her will not have been in vain.

    Credit  : Guardian News
    Full text: Obama letter to Aung San Suu Kyi

    Yangon, Myanmar (CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally delivered a letter from President Barack Obama to Myanmar's leading democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi Thursday. Here is the letter in full as released by the State Department:

    Aung San Suu Kyi

    Rangoon, Burma

    Daw Aung San Suu Kyi:

    It was a pleasure and an honor to speak with you recently. As I said during our conversation, I have long admired your brave and unwavering struggle for democracy, and I consider our conversation a highlight of my recent visit to Asia.

    I am pleased that the Burmese government has taken several encouraging steps in the direction of democracy and reform. Secretary of State Clinton's visit will explore how the United States can support efforts to foster political opening and respect for universal human rights, as well as demonstrate the seriousness of our commitment to helping the people of Burma achieve their democratic aspirations.

    I thank you for your welcome of the Secretary's visit, and look forward to speaking to you again. Thank you for the inspiration you provide all of us around the world who share the values of democracy, human rights, and justice. We stand by you now and always.

    Sincerely,

    Barack Obama
    Colourful Ones




    Credit  : CNN





    SECRETARY CLINTON: Good afternoon, and – mingalaba, is that how you say it? Yeah? How? QUESTION: Mingalaba.
    SECRETARY CLINTON: Mingalaba. Thank you.

    Let me start by saying that I want to emphasize that while I may be the first United States Secretary of State to visit in over a half century, our two nations are far from strangers. We’ve had a long history together, from the earliest American missionaries to generations of traders and merchants to the shared sacrifices of World War Two. The United States was among the first to recognize this country’s independence, and we have welcomed the many contributions of Burmese Americans to our own culture and prosperity. And Americans from all walks of life are following closely the events here.

    So I come with a great deal of interest and awareness of what is happening. And on behalf of my country and President Obama, I came to assess whether the time is right for a new chapter in our shared history. Today, I met with President Thein Sein, his foreign minister, other senior ministers, and the speakers and members of parliament in both houses. We had candid, productive conversations about the steps taken so far, and the path ahead for reform.
    Tomorrow, I will be meeting with ethnic minority groups and civil society. I will be meeting tonight and tomorrow with Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of the political opposition.
    President Thein Sein has taken the first steps toward a long-awaited opening. His government has eased some restrictions on the media and civil society, opened a dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, rewritten election and labor laws, and released 200 prisoners of conscience. The president told me he seeks to build on these steps, and I assured him that these reforms have our support. I also told him that while the measures already taken may be unprecedented and certainly welcome, they are just a beginning. It is encouraging that political prisoners have been released, but over a thousand are still not free. Let me say publicly what I said privately earlier today. No person in any country should be detained for exercising universal freedoms of expression, assembly, and conscience.

    It is also encouraging that Aung San Suu Kyi is now free to take part in the political process. But that, too, will not be sufficient unless all political parties can open offices throughout the country and compete in free, fair, and credible elections. We welcome initial steps from the government to reduce ethnic tensions and hostilities. But as long as terrible violence continues in some of the world’s longest-running internal conflicts, it will be difficult to begin a new chapter.
    This country’s diversity, its dozens of ethnic groups and languages, its shrines, pagodas, mosques, and churches should be a source of strength in the 21st century. And I urged the president to allow international humanitarian groups, human rights monitors and journalists access to conflict zones.

    National reconciliation remains a defining challenge, and more needs to be done to address the root causes of conflict and to advance an inclusive dialogue that will finally bring peace to all of the people. We discussed these and many other challenges ahead, including the need to combat illegal trafficking in persons, weapons, and drugs. And I was very frank in stating that better relations with the United States will only be possible if the entire government respects the international consensus against the spread of nuclear weapons. We look to the government to fully implement UN Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874, and we support the government’s stated determination to sever military ties with North Korea.
    In each of my meetings, leaders assured me that progress would continue and broaden. And as it does, the United States will actively support those, both inside and outside of government, who genuinely seek reform. For decades, the choices of this country’s leaders kept it apart from the global economy and the community of nations. Today, the United States is prepared to respond to reforms with measured steps to lessen the isolation and to help improve the lives of its citizens. That includes an invitation to join neighboring countries as an observer in the Lower Mekong Initiative. We have agreed to IMF and World Bank assessment missions to begin studying the needs on the ground for development, particularly in rural areas, and poverty reduction.
    We discussed loosening restrictions on UNDP health and microfinance programs, pursuing education and training efforts, and resuming joint counter-narcotics missions. And just as the search for missing Americans once helped us repair relations with Vietnam, today we spoke about a new joint effort to recover the remains of hundreds of Americans lost here during World War II during the building of the Burma Road.

    These are beginning steps, and we are prepared to go even further if reforms maintain momentum. In that spirit, we are discussing what it will take to upgrade diplomatic relations and exchange ambassadors. Over time, this could become an important channel to air concerns, monitor and support progress, and build trust on both sides.

    The last time an American Secretary of State came to Burma, it was John Foster Dulles, and this country was considered the jewel of Asia, a center of higher learning and the rice bowl of the region. In the last half century, other countries have raced ahead and turned East Asia into one of the world’s great centers of dynamic growth and opportunity. So the most consequential question facing this country, both leaders and citizens, is not your relationship with the United States or with any other nation. It is whether leaders will let their people live up to their God-given potential and claim their place at the heart of the 21st century, a Pacific century.
    There is no guarantee how that question will be answered. If the question is not answered in a positive way, then once again, the people could be left behind. But if it is answered in a positive way, I think the potential is unlimited.
    I’m told there is an old Burmese proverb which says, “When it rains, collect water.” Well, we don’t know yet if the path to democracy is irreversible, as one of the leaders told me today, if the opening of the economy will be considered a positive and moved quickly to achieve. So the question is not for me to answer. The question is for all of you, particularly leaders, to answer. But we owe it to nearly 60 million people who seek freedom, dignity, and opportunity to do all we can to make sure that question is answered positively.
    President Obama spoke of flickers of progress. Well, we know from history that flickers can die out. They can even be stamped out. Or they can be ignited. It will be up to the leaders and the people to fan those flickers of progress into flames of freedom that light the path toward a better future. That and nothing less is what it will take for us to turn a solitary visit into a lasting partnership. As I told President Thein Sein earlier today, the United States is prepared to walk the path of reform with you if you choose to keep moving in that direction. And there’s no doubt that direction is the right one for the people.
    I’ll be happy to take some questions.
    MS. NULAND: We have time for four questions today. I guess the first one is The New York Times, Steve Myers.
    QUESTION: Thanks, Toria. Madam Secretary, thank you. Sorry. Thank you, Madam Secretary. The – Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday said that she personally trusted the president but wasn’t sure about the views of others in the government. After your meetings today, do you share that view?

    And in your discussions today, did you talk about a timetable for some of the reciprocal steps from both countries that you would like to see? Is this a matter of months or years? Thank you.
    SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Steve, we had a very substantive, serious, and candid, long discussion, both in the formal setting and then over lunch, between myself and President Thein Sein. He laid out a comprehensive vision of reform, reconciliation, and economic development for his country, including specifics such as the release of political prisoners, an inclusive political process, and free, fair, and credible bi-elections, a rigorous peace and reconciliation process to bring to an end some of the longest-standing conflicts anywhere in the world, and strong assurances regarding his country’s compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874, and their nonproliferation commitments with respect to North Korea.

    I made it clear that he and those who support that vision which he laid out for me, both inside and outside of government, will have our support as they continue to make progress, and that the United States is willing to match actions with actions. We want to be a partner in this reform process, starting with the steps that I laid out today. I also told him that, based on my experience and my observation, I am well aware that he has people in his government who are very supportive of this reform agenda, and he has people who are worried about it or opposed to it, and he has people in the middle who are sitting on the fence, trying to make up their minds. What I hope is that our strong commitment, coupled with the willingness of the international community – particularly multinational organizations from the UN to the IMF to the World Bank and others – expressing our strong support for this path. And what it will mean in terms of delivering concrete benefits will give him extra support in the internal debates that are underway.
    So I certainly believe that we now have a clear sense of what he is trying to achieve and how best we can support him. And let me add that, in my meetings with the foreign minister and the speakers of both the upper and the lower house, I heard the same things about the issues that had to be addressed in order for reform to continue. I wasn’t given specific dates, but I was certainly assured that actions would be taken on a regular and ongoing basis.

    MS. NULAND: Next question, from Shwe Gin Maru (ph) of Myanmar Times.

    QUESTION: Thank you, Madam. I would like to know, do you think (inaudible) reaching with the new Government of Myanmar, and (inaudible)?
    SECRETARY CLINTON: I thought that today was an excellent opportunity for me to both listen to officials in the government describe what their intentions are and the actions that they are planning to take and for them to hear from me on behalf of the United States how much we support this path of reform, how we expect to see additional steps taken on political prisoners, on peace and reconciliation, on the bi-elections, on the enforcement of the laws that have been passed, which are quite encouraging but need to be implemented. And I will certainly emphasize that if what I heard today is followed through on by the government, that meets the concerns that we have as to whether or not this is a serious and sincere effort. And we hope that it is.

    MS. NULAND: Next question, Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal.
    QUESTION: Madam Secretary, thank you. China’s response to your visit and the U.S. reengagement in general has been one of concern. And in fact, they’ve spoken openly about a competition between the U.S. and China for inputs in Myanmar. Their state media just today warned that they will not accept their interests being stamped on here. And I wondered, just briefly, two things. Do you fear that U.S. reengagement could cause any sort of backlash with Beijing? And more broadly, countries like Myanmar in the region, what can the U.S. do to assuage countries like that? They’re sort of caught between these two titans of the new Pacific century.
    SECRETARY CLINTON: That’s an important question, and it’s one that I addressed in all of my discussions. Our engagement here is rooted in our longstanding interest in seeking positive change. We have, as I said at the very beginning, a long history that has many positive aspects to it. But we have been dismayed by some of the actions of the past decades, and we are encouraged to see the changes that are taking place.
    This is an interest that spans decades, that cuts across every political divide in the United States, because it’s a country that has both fascinated and worried Americans for many years. And we are not about opposing any other country; we’re about supporting this country. And we actually consult regularly with China about our engagements in the Asia Pacific region, including how we see events unfolding here. And we welcome – as I specifically told the president and the two speakers, we welcome positive, constructive relations between China and her neighbors. We think that’s in China’s interest as well as the neighborhood’s interest. We think that being friends with one doesn’t mean not being friends with others. So from our perspective, we are not viewing this in light of any competition with China. We’re viewing this on its merits as an opportunity for us to reengage here. And we think that that is a very open possibility. And that’s why I’m here to assess it for myself.
    MS. NULAND: And the last question today, Fine Kin Zin Lay (ph) from The Voice.
    QUESTION: (Inaudible) asking two questions. One question is: Do you see any probability for release all political prisoners? And the second question is: Did you discuss about sanctions with the president? Are there any probability to ease sanction, or never? Thank you.
    SECRETARY CLINTON: We discussed both of those issues at some length because, obviously, they are important subjects in our renewed dialogue.
    With respect to political prisoners, we believe that any political prisoner anywhere should be released. One political prisoner is one too many, in our view. And we’re concerned about the continued detention of more than a thousand prisoners of conscience here. We welcome the release of the 200 political prisoners in October, and we have consistently called for and encouraged the release of all political prisoners. I did so again. And I made it clear that was an issue that would have to be resolved before we could take some of the steps that we would be willing to take because the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners is a key test of the government’s commitment to human rights and democracy and internal national reconciliation.

    So we’re aware of the process that is followed and the constitutional provision that gives authority to the president. We know that for the release in October, the parliament agreed to support that. So I discussed it with the president and both speakers, and we are certainly hopeful that we will see such release of all prisoners in the near future.
    With regard to sanctions, we’re in the early stages of our dialogue. And I want to state for the record that my visit today is the result of over two years of work on our behalf. We’ve had at least 20 high-level visits. We have Assistant Secretary Campbell, our former representative Scott Marciel. We’ve had a very active engagement by our chargé, and then we filled the position that the Congress created for a permanent special representative with Ambassador Derek Mitchell.
    So for more than two years, ever since I asked that we do a review of our Burma policy in 2009, we have been reaching out, we’ve been trying to gather information, because we wanted to see change for the benefit of all of the people. And so we have been working toward this, and the reason that we were finally able to reach the decision that the president announced for me to visit is because of the steps that the government has taken.
    We know more needs to be done, however, and we think that we have to wait to make sure that this commitment is real. So we’re not only talking to senior members of the government, but we’re talking to civil society members, we’re talking to members of the political opposition, we’re talking to representatives of ethnic minorities, because we want to be sure that we have as full a picture as possible.
    So we’re not at the point yet that we can consider lifting sanctions that we have in place because of our ongoing concerns about policies that have to be reversed. But any steps that the government takes will be carefully considered and will be, as I said, matched because we want to see political and economic reform take hold. And I told the leadership that we will certainly consider the easing and elimination of sanctions as we go forward in this process together. And it has to be not theoretical or rhetorical. It has to be very real, on the ground, that can be evaluated. But we are open to that, and we are going to pursue many different avenues to demonstrate our continuing support for this path of reform.

    MS. NULAND: Thank you very much.

    SECRETARY CLINTON: Thanks, everyone. Thank you all very much. Wonderful to have a chance to talk to you.

    Credit : State Dept
    အင္းစိန္ေထာင္မွာ ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၁၅ ႏွစ္ က်ခံေနရတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား ကိုေအာင္ခ်ိဳဦး (ေခၚ) ကိုယူႏြတ္ကို အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ ဆရာဝန္ႀကီးက ေမ့ေဆး ထံုေဆး မေပးဘဲ ဆီးက်ိတ္ခဲြခဲ့ၿပီး ေသြးလြန္လာမွ အင္းစိန္ေဆး႐ုံကို ပို႔လိုက္ေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ ခြဲစိတ္ဒဏ္ရာကို ခ်ဳပ္မေပးတဲ့ အတြက္ ေဝဒနာ အျပင္းအထန္ ခံစားေနရေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္၊

    နာမည္ေက်ာ္ အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ႀကီး၏ ဘူးဝတြင္ လံုျခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႕ဝင္မ်ား ေစာင့္ၾကပ္ေနပံု ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ (Photo: AFP)

    အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ ဆရာဝန္ႀကီးက သာမန္ လူနာေတြ စစ္ေဆးတဲ့ ေနရာမွာ ေမ့ေဆး၊ ထံုေဆးမေပးဘဲ ကိုေအာင္ခ်ိဳဦးကို ခြဲစိတ္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သူ႔ကို ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့တဲ့ အဂၤါဝတ္ျပဳ ဆုေတာင္းအဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ေဒၚခင္ဝင္းၾကည္က ေျပာပါတယ္။

    လာမယ့္ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၅ ရက္မွာ ခြဲစိတ္ ကုသမႈ ခံယူမယ့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား သံဃာေတာ္ ဦးတိေလာက၊ လူအမည္ ဦးႏိုင္လင္းဦးကို အဂၤါဝတ္ျပဳ ဆုေတာင္းအဖြဲ႔က ယမန္္ေန႔ ညေနက ေဆး႐ုံကို သြားေရာက္ ေတြ႔ဆံုစဥ္မွာ ကိုေအာင္ခ်ိဳဦးနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္။

    မေန႔ကအထိ ခြဲစိတ္ဒဏ္ရာကို ျပန္ခ်ဳပ္ေပးျခင္း မရွိတဲ့ အတြက္ အနာက ေရာင္ရမ္း ကိုက္ခဲေနေၾကာင္း၊ ေနာက္ရက္မွာ တာဝန္က် ဆရာဝန္ေတြက လာေရာက္ ေမးျမန္းၾကတဲ့အခါ မသက္သာေၾကာင္း ေျပာေပမယ့္ ခြဲစိတ္ ဒဏ္ရာကို ေဆးသာ အံုထားေပးေၾကာင္း သိရပါတယ္။

    ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလုံး ဆိုင္ရာ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား ဒီမိုကရက္တစ္ တပ္ဦး ABSDF အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ ကိုေအာင္ခ်ိဳဦးရဲ႕ အေျခအေနနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ အာရ္အက္ဖ္ေအက အင္းစိန္ေဆး႐ုံကို အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္း ခဲ့ေပမယ့္ ေျဖဆိုသူ မရွိပါဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ကို ေမးျမန္တဲ့အခါမွာ တာဝန္က် အရာရွိက သူတို႔မွာ ဌာနစိတ္ေတြ မ်ားလို႔ အတိအက် မသိႏိုင္တဲ့ အတြက္ အင္းစိန္ ေဆး႐ုံကိုသာ ေမးျမန္းပါလို႔ ေျပာဆိုပါတယ္။

    ကိုေအာင္ခ်ိဳဦးရဲ႕ ျဖစ္ရပ္မွန္ အေျခအေနနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား အကူအညီေပးေရး ကြန္ရက္အဖြဲ႔က ကိုေအာင္ေဇာ္ထြန္းကို အာရ္အက္ဖ္ေအ အဖြဲ႔သား ကိုေနရိန္ေက်ာ္က ဆက္သြယ္ ေမးျမန္းထားပါတယ္။

    Listen RFA Interview here

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