ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ျဖစ္ေပၚေျပာင္းလဲေနသည့္ အေျပာင္းအလဲျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ားႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး သမုိင္းပညာရွင္ စာေရးဆရာ ေဒါက္တာသန္႔ျမင့္ဦးကို ျမန္မာတုိင္း(မ္) အႀကီးတန္းလက္ေထာက္စာတည္း စႏၵာလြင္က အီးေမး(လ္)မွတစ္ဆင့္ ေမးျမန္းထားပါသည္။

ေဒါက္တာသန္႔ျမင့္ဦး သည္ သမိုင္းပညာရွင္ စာေရး ဆရာ တစ္ဦးျဖစ္ၿပီး ကိန္း ဘရစ္ဂ်္တကၠသိုလ္ ထရီနီတီ ေကာလိပ္၏ ၤနူူသတ တစ္ဦး ျဖစ္ခဲ့ကာ ဟားဗတ္၊ ကိန္း ဘရစ္ဂ်္ စသည့္ ကမၻာေက်ာ္ တကၠသိုလ္မ်ားစြာတြင္ သင္ တန္းမ်ား ပို႔ခ်ခဲ့သည္။ ကမၻာ့ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမႉး ခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း ဦးသန္႔၏ ေျမး ျဖစ္ကာ ကုလၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ထိန္းသိမ္းမႈ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ သံုးခုတြင္ ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၿပီး ကမၻာ့ ကုလသမဂၢ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဌာန၊ မူ၀ါဒစီစဥ္ေရးဌာန အႀကီးအကဲအျဖစ္လည္း တာ၀န္ယူခဲ့သည္။ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ျမန္မာမိဘမ်ားက ေမြးဖြားခဲ့သည့္ ေဒါက္တာသန္႔ျမင့္ဦးသည္ နယူေရာ့ခ္တိုင္း(မ္)ႏွင့္ တိုင္း(မ္)ကဲ့သို႔ ကမၻာေက်ာ္ စာေစာင္မ်ား တြင္ Thant Myint-U အမည္ျဖင့္ ေဆာင္းပါးမ်ား ေရးသားခဲ့ၿပီး သူ၏လက္ရာစာအုပ္မ်ားတြင္ The Making of Modern Burma ၊ The River of Lost Footsteps ႏွင့္ Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia စာအုပ္မ်ား ပါ၀င္သည္။

* အေျပာင္းအလဲျဖစ္စဥ္ တစ္ခုကိုေတာ့ ျဖတ္သန္းေနၿပီ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒီျဖစ္စဥ္ကေန ေပၚလာမယ့္ရလဒ္ကိုေတာ့ ပီပီျပင္ျပင္ ပံုေဖာ္ၾကည့္လို႔ မရေသးသလိုပါပဲ။ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္မႈ လမ္းေၾကာင္းေပၚကို စေရာက္ၿပီလို႔ ဆရာယူဆပါသလား။

ေယဘုယ်အားျဖင့္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ အေကာင္းျမင္ထားခ်င္ပါတယ္။ စစ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရး ေခတ္ေဟာင္းကေတာ့ က်န္ခဲ့ၿပီလို႔လည္း ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ယံုၾကည္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒီလိုေျပာတာဟာ ေရွ႕ေလွ်ာက္ လြယ္လင့္ တကူပဲလို႔ေတာ့ ဆိုလိုတာ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ႏိုင္ငံ ရင္ဆိုင္ရမယ့္ စိန္ေခၚမႈေတြဟာ သိပ္ကို အေျမာက္အျမားပဲ။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးမွာေရာ၊ စီးပြား ေရးမွာေရာ။ သမၼတႀကီးဟာ ဆင္းရဲႏြမ္းပါးမႈ ေလ်ာ့က်ဖို႔ အားလံုးဦး တည္ၿပီး လိုအပ္တဲ့ စီးပြား ေရးျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြကေန ဒီ ဦးတည္ ခ်က္ အေကာင္အထည္ေပၚလာ ဖို႔ အျပင္းအထန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနတယ္လို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ယံုၾကည္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အေကာင္အထည္ျမင္ရဖို႔ အနည္းဆံုး ႏွစ္တိုကာလအတြင္းမွာ ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ အလြန္႔အလြန္ကို ခက္ခဲ ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ အေကာင္းကို ျမင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ေရွ႕ လမ္းခရီး အလြန္ခက္ခဲ မယ္ဆိုတာကိုေတာ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ တည္တည္ ၿငိမ္ၿငိမ္နဲ႔ ၾကည့္ထားဖို႔လိုမယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕အေျပာင္းအလဲျဖစ္စဥ္ဟာ ကမၻာ့သမိုင္းမွာ အေတာ္မၾကံဳစဖူး ျဖစ္တဲ့ကာလမွာ ေပၚေပါက္ေနတယ္ ဆိုတာလည္း သတိရဖို႔လိုတယ္။ ဥပမာ ေရွ႕တစ္ႏွစ္ႏွစ္ႏွစ္မွာ ဥေရာပမွာ အတန္အသင့္ စီးပြားက်တဲ့ကာလနဲ႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ၾကံဳရႏိုင္တယ္။ တစ္ကမၻာလံုးနဲ႔ခ်ီ ပိုျပင္းထန္သြားတာမ်ဳိးလည္း ျဖစ္သြားႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒီအခ်က္က ျမန္မာအေပၚ အလြန္ဆိုးရြားစြာ ႐ိုက္ခတ္ႏိုင္တယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံတြင္းအေျခအေနကို ၾကည့္ရင္လည္း ကြ်န္ေတာ္စဥ္းစားလို႔ ရသ ေလာက္ လက္နက္ကိုင္ ပဋိပကၡေတြ ျဖစ္ပြားေနတုန္း၊ ႏိုင္ငံတကာက ပိတ္ဆို႔ ေနတုန္း၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးနဲ႔ စီးပြားေရးစနစ္ ႏွစ္ခု စလံုး တစ္ၿပိဳင္နက္ ကူးေျပာင္းမႈ စတင္တာ ဘယ္ႏိုင္ငံမွ မရွိခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔မွာ မရရေအာင္ ေက်ာ္လႊားရမယ့္ အဂတိလိုက္မႈဆုိင္ရာ စိန္ေခၚမႈ အႀကီးႀကီးေတြ ရွိေနတယ္။ အခု ထက္ထိ ရင္ဆိုင္ ေနရဆဲ လက္နက္ကိုင္ပဋိပကၡေတြကို အဆံုးသတ္ဖို႔ လုပ္ရဦးမယ္။ လက္နက္ကိုင္ ပဋိပကၡေတြ ဆက္ရွိေနလို႔ကေတာ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ႏိုင္ငံ အခုထက္ပို ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳး မလာႏိုင္ဘူး။ ေငြေၾကးနဲ႔ ဘ႑ာေရး မူ၀ါဒေတြ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ မက္ခ႐ိုစီးပြားေရး မူ၀ါဒေတြ နည္းလမ္း တက်ျဖစ္ဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ ဒီစိန္ေခၚမႈေတြကို ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႔ရာ လည္း လိုအပ္တဲ့ လုပ္ထံုးလုပ္နည္း၊ ဥပေဒအဖြဲ႕အစည္း၊ လူအဖြဲ႕အစည္း(Institutions) ေတြ မရွိဘူး။ အဲဒီ အတြက္ စိတ္လည္း မေကာင္းဘူး။။အေျခခံ ျပည္သူ႔၀န္ထမ္းအဖြဲ႕အစည္း ေတြ အထူးသျဖင့္ က်န္းမာေရး၊ ပညာ ေရး၊ ဘ႑ာေရးနဲ႔ ဘဏ္လုပ္ငန္း၊ ဥပေဒ နဲ႔ တရားစီရင္ေရးနယ္က ျပည္သူ႔ ၀န္ထမ္းအဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြ အားေကာင္း လာေအာင္ လုပ္ရမယ္။ အဲဒီ Institution change ကို လုပ္ရတာ အထူးသျဖင့္ကို အခ်ိန္ယူရပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္လည္း ထပ္ေျပာရရင္ သမၼတဟာ ဒီကိစၥေတြကို လမ္းမွန္ကမ္း မွန္အတိုင္း ျဖစ္ထြန္းလာေစဖို႔ သႏၷိ႒ာန္ ခ်ထားတယ္လို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ယံုၾကည္ ပါတယ္။ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈရဖို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ပထမဦးဆံုး လိုအပ္တာက ေအာင္ျမင္ ဖို႔ဆိုတဲ့ စိတ္ပဲေလ။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္းက လူတိုင္း နီးပါးဟာ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံကို ေအာင္ျမင္ေစခ်င္တယ္၊ ကမၻာ့ အဆင္းရဲဆံုးႏိုင္ငံတစ္ႏိုင္ငံ ျဖစ္မေနေစခ်င္ၾကေတာ့ဘူးလို႔လည္း ကြ်န္ေတာ္ သေဘာရထားတယ္။ ျခံဳေျပာရင္ အနာဂတ္မွာ ေႏွာင့္ ေႏွးေစမယ့္ အခက္အခဲေတြေရာ၊ အံ့အားတသင့္ ျဖစ္ရတာေတြေရာ ေသခ်ာေပါက္ ရွိပါလိမ့္မယ္။ အေပၚ စီးက လႊမ္းျခံဳၾကည့္လို႔ ဘယ္လိုပဲျဖစ္ေနေန တိုင္းသူျပည္သား လူတစ္ဦးခ်င္းစီဟာ အေျပာင္း အလဲႀကီးေတြကို ျဖစ္ေစလိမ့္မယ္။ ကံတရားကလည္း အေျပာင္း အလဲႀကီးေတြကို ျဖစ္ေစပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ျမန္မာဟာ ကံေကာင္းလိမ့္ မယ္လို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ပါတယ္။

* အစိုးရက စီးပြားေရးျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈကို ဦးစားေပးအျဖစ္ ရည္ရြယ္ထား ၿပီး ျပည္ပလုပ္ငန္းေတြကလည္း လာၿပီးရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံဖို႔ ၾကည့္ေနၾကၿပီ။ ဒီေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္း ရဲ႕ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္မႈကို ပံုစံအမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးနဲ႔ စဥ္းစားၾကတာလည္းရွိတဲ့အတြက္ ဆရာ့ အေနနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံမွာ ဘယ္လိုဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳး တိုးတက္မႈမ်ဳိးရတာကို ျမင္ခ်င္ပါသလဲ။

နံပါတ္တစ္ ဦးစားေပးကေတာ့ ဆင္းရဲ ႏြမ္းပါးျခင္း ေလ်ာ့က်ဖို႔ ျဖစ္ရမွာပဲ။ အေရအတြက္ သန္းဆယ္ခ်ီတဲ့ သိပ္ဆင္းရဲေနသူေတြဟာ မေသ႐ံုတမယ္ပဲ ျဖစ္ေနၾကတယ္။ က်န္းမာေရးကိစၥေပၚရင္ ေဆးကုစရာမရွိဘူး။ သားသမီးေတြဟာ မ်ားေသာအားျဖင့္ ေက်ာင္းကို တစ္ႏွစ္ ႏွစ္ႏွစ္ပဲ တက္ၾကတယ္။ စားစရာ လံုေလာက္တယ္ဆိုဦး ကေလးေတြ အတြက္လိုအပ္တဲ့ အာဟာရျပည့္ အစားအ ေသာက္ ေတြ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အေႂကြးပိေနသူ သန္းခ်ီရွိေနတယ္။ ေနာက္ထပ္လူသန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာလည္း ႏိုင္ငံကေနထြက္ၿပီး ျပည္ပမွာ အလုပ္ ရွာၾကရတယ္။ တစ္ေခါက္သြားရင္ ႏွစ္ အေတာ္ၾကာ မိသားစုနဲ႔ေ၀းေနရတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ပထမဦးဆံုးျမင္ခ်င္တာက ႏိုင္ငံမွာ ဒီ လူဆင္းရဲေတြအတြက္ အေထာက္အကူျဖစ္မယ့္၊ ေနာက္ ေက်းလက္ဆိုင္ရာ သက္ေမြးလုပ္ငန္းပိုင္းနဲ႔ အစားအေသာက္ဖူလံုေရး အပိုင္းကို တိုးတက္ေစမယ့္ လက္ေတြ႕နဲ႔ ကိုက္ၿပီး အေျခခိုင္တဲ့ေျခလွမ္းေတြကိုပဲ။ ကုန္ ေဈးႏႈန္းကို ႀကီးမလာေစဘဲ တစ္ခ်ိန္တည္းမွာ ၿမိဳ႕ႀကီးေတြမွာ အလုပ္အကိုင္ေတြ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ဖန္တီးဖို႔လိုတယ္။ ဆိုလိုတာက ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕မက္ခ႐ို စီးပြားေရးမူ၀ါဒေတြ လမ္း မွန္က်ဖို႔လို႔ အဓိပၸာယ္ေရာက္တာပဲ။ ႏိုင္ငံမွာ ပံုေဖာ္မယ့္ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္မႈ အတြက္ စံပံုစံတစ္ခုခုကို သတ္သတ္ မွတ္မွတ္ ေရြးဖို႔ လိုတယ္လို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ေတာ့ မထင္ဘူး။ တ႐ုတ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တိန္႔ေရွာင္ဖိန္ ေျပာသလို ေက်ာက္တံုးကို စမ္းရင္းနင္းရင္းနဲ႔ (ေခ်ာင္း တစ္ခုကို ျဖတ္သည့္အခါ ေအာက္ေျခေျမျပင္ကို ေျချဖင့္ စမ္းကာစမ္းကာ ေျခကုတ္ျမဲေစ လ်က္ကူးသကဲ့သို႔) ျမစ္ကိုကူးသြားရမွာပဲ။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေရွ႕ဆက္လုပ္တဲ့ အခါ ၾကံဳလာရမယ့္ ညႇိႏိႈင္းစရာအေျခ အေနေတြနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး သိျမင္ႏွံ႕စပ္ၿပီး ပြင့္လင္းမႈရွိရွိ အေျခ အတင္ ျငင္းခုန္ ေဆြးေႏြးအေျဖရွာဖို႔ (အလုပ္႐ံုေဆြးေႏြး ပြဲမ်ား) လိုတယ္။ ဥပမာ ပမာဏႀကီးလာေနတဲ့ ခရီးသြား လုပ္ငန္းဆိုရင္ ႏိုင္ငံမွာေကာင္းက်ဳိးရႏုိင္ သလို ဆိုးက်ဳိးေတြလည္း ျဖစ္ႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒါကို အလုပ္အကိုင္ေတြလည္း ေပၚေပါက္ေစ၊ တစ္ခ်ိန္တည္းမွာ သဘာ၀ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ကိုလည္း မထိခိုက္ေစ၊ တျခားျဖစ္လာႏိုင္တဲ့ မ်ားစြာေသာ ဆိုးက်ဳိးဆက္ေတြလည္း ပါမလာေစေအာင္ ဘယ္လို ကိုင္တြယ္မလဲ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ စစဥ္းစားၾကဖို႔လိုၿပီ။

* ႏိုင္ငံမွာ မဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးဘဲ တျခားဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေတြကိုပဲေမွ်ာ္ရင္း အေနၾကာ လာေတာ့ ကြ်န္မတို႔ႏိုင္ငံက လူတခ်ဳိ႕ အေနနဲ႔ ကိုယ္တိုင္နဲ႔ ကိုယ့္ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးႏိုင္မႈအလားအလာအေပၚ မယံုမရဲ ျဖစ္ေနႏိုင္မလား။

ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ မက္ခ႐ိုစီးပြားေရး မူ၀ါဒေတြနဲ႔ ဘတ္ဂ်က္ဦးစားေပးသံုးစြဲမႈ က႑ေတြကို မွန္ကန္ေအာင္ ျပဳႏိုင္စြမ္းရင္၊ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ တို႔ရဲ႕ စီးပြားေရးျပဳျပင္ ေျပာင္းလဲမႈ အစီအစဥ္ေတြကို လမ္းက်ေအာင္ အစီအစဥ္ခ်ႏိုင္စြမ္းရင္၊ ျပည္သူ႔ ၀န္ထမ္းအဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြ အားေကာင္းလာေရး ေရရွည္လမ္းေၾကာင္းေပၚကို အနည္းဆံုး ေျခစခ်ႏိုင္စြမ္းၿပီဆိုရင္၊ အဲလို ဆိုရင္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ထင္ပါတယ္၊ စစ္မွန္ၿပီး ေကာင္းမြန္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲေကာင္းေတြကို ႏွစ္ႏွစ္ သံုးႏွစ္ အတိုင္းအတာအတြင္း ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ စျမင္ႏိုင္မွာပါ။ အလားအလာ ကေတာ့ ဧရာမႀကီးပဲ။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ေတြ မပ်က္စီးေသးဘူး။ လူဦးေရ မတန္တဆမ်ားတဲ့ျပႆနာ မရွိေသး ဘူး။ တ႐ုတ္ႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံၾကား အိႏၵိယ သမုဒၵရာေဘးတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ အံ့ဩစရာ ေကာင္းေလာက္ေအာင္ ေကာင္းတဲ့ ပထ၀ီ တည္ေနရာ ရွိတယ္။ သူမ်ားႏိုင္ငံ ေတြေနာက္ အမ်ားႀကီး က်န္ေနရစ္တာ ကေတာ့ ဆိုးလွတာေပါ့။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒါေတြကို ကြ်န္ေတာ္ တို႔ရဲ႕ အားသာခ်က္ ေတြျဖစ္လာေအာင္ အသံုးခ်လို႔ရတယ္။ သူမ်ားႏိုင္ငံေတြ လုပ္ခဲ့မိတဲ့ အမွားေတြကို ေရွာင္ရွားႏိုင္တယ္။ အခု လက္ငင္းအခ်ိန္ကာလမွာ အဲဒီ ေဒသတြင္း တျခားႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ႕အမွား ေတြအေပၚ ေလ့လာသံုးသပ္ သင္ခန္းစာ ထုတ္ယူေနမႈကို ဦးစားေပးလုပ္ငန္းႀကီး အျဖစ္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနသင့္တယ္။ ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြဟာ အၾကာႀကီး စိတ္ရွည္ေပးထားခဲ့ၿပီးၿပီ။ ျမန္မာျပည္ သူေတြဟာ ကိုယ္တိုင္အတြက္ေရာ၊ သူတို႔ ရဲ႕ကေလးေတြအတြက္ေရာ ပိုေကာင္း တဲ့ ဘ၀တစ္ခုကို အခ်ိန္မဆိုင္းဘဲ ခံစား ရဖို႔ ထိုက္ တန္ေနသူေတြျဖစ္တယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ယေန႔ကေလးငယ္ေတြဟာ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ထင္ပါတယ္၊ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ အလုပ္ေတြကို မွန္ကန္တဲ့ လမ္းေၾကာင္းအတိုင္း 'အခု' ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေရွ႕ဆက္ ေရြ႕လ်ားေစႏိုင္စြမ္းရင္ ဒီေန႔ သားသမီး အရြယ္ေတြအတြက္ အလားအလာေတြ ဟာ အဆံုးမရွိပါဘူး။

* ဒီအလားအလာေတြ ရွိသေလာက္ လက္ေတြ႕ခံစားၾကရေအာင္ သာမန္ ျပည္သူျပည္သားေတြရဲ႕ ပါ၀င္လုပ္ ေဆာင္မႈနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ေတာ့ေရာ ေျပာခ်င္တာရွိပါသလား။

ျမန္မာဟာ ျပည္သူ႔ဘ႑ာ စီမံခန္႔ခြဲမႈ ကစ ဘဏ္လုပ္ငန္းအဆံုး၊ လူထုက်န္းမာ ေရးကစ ႏိုင္ငံတကာဥပေဒေရးရာအဆံုး လက္ေတြ႕ နယ္ပယ္တိုင္းမွာ ပညာခန္း အထူးပိုင္ႏိုင္ကြ်မ္းက်င္သူေတြ အသည္း အသန္ကို လိုအပ္တယ္။ အသိပညာေရးရာအတြက္ ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ ႏွံျခင္းမရွိဘဲနဲ႔ တျခားဘယ္အရာမွ အမ်ားႀကီးျဖစ္ထြန္း လာဖို႔ဆိုတာေတာ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ သံသယ ရွိတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေရာက္ဖို႔ လိုတဲ့အေနအထားကိုရဖို႔ မ်ဳိးဆက္ တစ္ ဆက္စာေတာ့ အခ်ိန္ယူမွာပဲ။ လက္ရွိ အခ်ိန္ရဲ႕ စိန္ေခၚမႈႀကီးတစ္ခုက အမ်ဳိး မ်ဳိးေသာ နယ္ပယ္မ်ားစြာမွာ အေတြ႕အၾကံဳ၊ ပညာေရးျပည့္၀သူ မရွိ ျဖစ္ေန တဲ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ အေနအထားကို ႏွစ္တိုနဲ႔ ႏွစ္လတ္ အပိုင္းအျခားအတြင္း ျဖည့္ဆည္းႏိုင္မယ့္ နည္းလမ္းေတြ ရွာ ေတြ႕ေရးပဲလို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ထင္တယ္။ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ႕ ပိတ္ဆို႔ မႈေတြကို ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ဆန္႔က်င္ ခဲ့တာ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္တစ္ခုက ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ဟာ လစ္ဘရယ္ဒီမိုကေရစီ စနစ္ က်င့္တဲ့သံုးႏိုင္ငံေတြနဲ႔ ပိုအထိ အေတြ႕မ်ားဖို႔ လိုအပ္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ ဒီပိတ္ဆို႔ မႈဟာ ျမန္မာကို လစ္ဘရယ္ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံေတြနဲ႔ ကင္းကြာ ေအာင္ပဲ အဓိက ျဖစ္ေစတယ္လို႔ ယံုၾကည္လို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ေနာက္တစ္ခ်က္ကေတာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ စနစ္ကို ေျပာင္းက်င့္သံုးလာေအာင္ လုပ္ဖို႔၊ အဲလို က်င့္သံုးခဲ့ၿပီဆိုရင္လည္း ဒီကူးေျပာင္းမႈ ေရရွည္ခံေအာင္ျမင္ တည္တံ့ေအာင္လုပ္ဖို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔မွာ လိုအပ္လာမွာ ျဖစ္တဲ့ ပညာခန္းနဲ႔ အဖြဲ႕ အစည္းရင္းျမစ္အေျခခံေတြရွိ ေနေစရ ေအာင္၊ အသိပညာေရးရာအတြက္ အစိုးရရဲ႕ ဘတ္ဂ်က္သံုးစြဲမႈလည္း သိပ္ နည္းေနခ်ိန္မွာ အဲဒီအသိပညာနဲ႔ ကြ်မ္းက်င္မႈ ရင္းျမစ္အေျခခံေတြကို တည္ေဆာက္ထားဖို႔ အေဆာတလ်င္ကို လိုအပ္တယ္လို႔ ယံုၾကည္ေနခဲ့လို႔ပဲ။ ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရတာက သင္ယူေလ့က်င့္မႈေတြအတြက္ေဒၚလာ သန္းေပါင္းရာေပါင္းမ်ားစြာအကူအညီ ေတြ၊ ေနာက္ ဒီေန႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ အသည္းအသန္ လိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ အဖြဲ႕အစည္း အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိး အားေကာင္းေအာင္ သံုးစြဲႏိုင္ခဲ့မယ့္ တျခား အကူအညီေတြ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ မရခဲ့တာပဲ။ ၿပီးေတာ့လည္း - ဒါကေတာ့ တျခား အဓိကက်တာတစ္ခုပါ - ဒီႏိုင္ငံမွာ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ စနစ္ကို တကယ္ က်င့္သံုးခ်င္တယ္ဆိုရင္ ႏိုင္ငံ သားအားလံုး အသိပညာ သိျမင္ႏွံစပ္ၿပီး ကိုယ္ကိုယ္တိုင္အတြက္လည္း ျဖစ္ တဲ့ကိစၥရပ္တိုင္းကို ဆန္းစစ္ ေ၀ဖန္စဥ္းစား ႏိုင္စြမ္း ရွိေနေစဖို႔ လိုအပ္တယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံတစ္ႏိုင္ငံမွာ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ အသိပညာ သိျမင္ ႏွံစပ္ၿပီး အေရးကိစၥ ေတြကို သူတို႔ကိုယ္တိုင္ ဂ႐ုတစိုက္ စဥ္းစားခ်င္စိတ္ ရွိမွ၊ ပါတီတစ္ခု၊ ေခါင္း ေဆာင္တစ္ေယာက္၊ အယူ ၀ါဒ တစ္ခုတည္းေနာက္ အသာလိုက္ မသြားမွသာလွ်င္ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္က အသက္ ၀င္ႏိုင္တယ္။

* လက္ရွိ မြဲမြဲေတေတ အေနအထားကေန တက္မလာႏိုင္ခဲ့ရင္ ေရွ႕ႀကံဳရႏိုင္တဲ့ အေျခအေနေတြကိုလည္း ဘယ္လိုသံုးသပ္မိပါသလဲ။

ကုန္ေဈးႏႈန္းျမင့္မလာေစဘဲ အလုပ္အကိုင္ေတြ ေပၚေပါက္ဖို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ အေရးတႀကီး လိုအပ္တယ္။ အဓိပၸာယ္က မွန္ကန္တဲ့ မက္ခ႐ိုစီးပြားေရးရပ္၀န္းနဲ႔ ဘ႑ာေရးနဲ႔ ေငြေၾကး မူ၀ါဒေတြ ရဖို႔ပဲ၊ ကြ်မ္းက်င္မႈနဲ႔ နည္းပညာေတြ ဆင့္ပြားရရွိေစမယ့္ မက္ေလာက္တဲ့ စီးပြားေရးရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈေတြရဖို႔နဲ႔ ကြ်မ္း က်င္မႈျပည့္၀စြာ ကိုင္တြယ္ခန္႔ခြဲထားတဲ့ ျပင္ပအကူအညီေတြရဖို႔ပဲ။ ဒါကို ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ လုပ္ႏိုင္တယ္။ လြယ္မွာေတာ့ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ စီးပြားေရး ခ်ဳိ႕တဲ့ေနခ်ိန္မွာ ဘယ္ႏိုင္ငံမွ ဒီမိုကေရစီအသြင္ ကူးေျပာင္းမႈေတြ၊ ပဋိပကၡ အလြန္ ကူးေျပာင္းမႈေတြ မေအာင္ျမင္ႏိုင္ဘူး။

* ႏိုင္ငံတကာဆက္ဆံေရးနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး တခ်ဳိ႕က တခ်ဳိ႕ကို တ႐ုတ္ တပည့္ခံတယ္လို႔ အျပစ္တင္တယ္။ တခ်ဳိ႕ကလည္း အေနာက္ ႏိုင္ငံေတြ ကိုေမွ်ာ္ေနတယ္လို႔ ေ၀ဖန္တယ္။

ျမန္မာဟာ ႏိုင္ငံအားလံုးနဲ႔ မိတ္ေဆြ ျဖစ္ရမယ္။ တ႐ုတ္ႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ အိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံတို႔နဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးေကာင္းဖို႔ အလြန္အေရး ႀကီးသလို အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ ဂ်ပန္လို အေ၀းက ႏိုင္ငံႀကီးေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးေကာင္း ဖို႔လည္း အလားတူ အေရးႀကီးတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရြးၿပီး ဆက္ဆံေရးလုပ္စရာ ဘာအေၾကာင္းမွမရွိဘူး။ စစ္ေအးကာလတုန္းကေတာင္ မလုပ္ခဲ့တာ အခုခ်ိန္ ဒီႏိုင္ငံ ေတြအ ကုန္လံုး တစ္ႏိုင္ငံနဲ႔ တစ္ႏိုင္ငံ အလြန္နီးကပ္စြာ စီးပြားေရးဆက္ဆံမႈ ရွိေနတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ ဒီလိုလုပ္စရာ ဘာအေၾကာင္းမွမရွိဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ဘာလိုအပ္ သလဲဆိုေတာ့ ပါးနပ္ကြ်မ္းက်င္ဖို႔ လို တယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံအမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိး ဘယ္ႏိုင္ငံက ဘယ္လိုအေထာက္ အကူေပးႏိုင္တယ္ ဆိုတာ နားလည္ဖို႔လိုတယ္။ ကမၻာ့ဘဏ္လို အာရွဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေရးဘဏ္လို အဖြဲ႕ အစည္းအမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးေတြဟာ ဘယ္အဖြဲ႕ အစည္းက ဘယ္လိုအေထာက္အကူေပး ႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ နားလည္ဖုိ႔လိုတယ္။ လက္ေတြ႕အလုပ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ စီးပြားေရး မဟာဗ်ဴဟာ တစ္ရပ္ ရွိဖို႔လိုၿပီး ကြ်န္ေတာ္ တို႔ရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံတကာဆက္ဆံေရးေတြကို အနည္းဆံုး တစ္စိတ္တစ္ေဒသအားျဖင့္ အဲဒီမဟာဗ်ဴဟာ အေပၚမွာ အေျခခံဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ကို ျမန္ႏိုင္သမွ် အျမန္ဆံုး ဆင္းရဲမြဲေတမႈ ေလ်ာ့က်ေအာင္၊ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေအာင္ အေကာင္းဆံုး အေထာက္အကူရေစမယ့္ နည္းလမ္းအားျဖင့္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ဆက္ဆံေရးကို ကိုင္တြယ္ဖုိ႔လိုတယ္။

* ဆရာတို႔မိသားစု ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အေျခခ်ဖို႔ ရွိပါသလား။

ရွိပါတယ္။ ဘယ္ေတာ့ျဖစ္မယ္ေတာ့ မေျပာတတ္ေသးဘူး။ အခုလည္း ကြ်န္ေတာ္ တစ္လတစ္လကို လ၀က္ေလာက္က ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံမွာပါပဲ။

credit here

Burma has been, for many outsiders, a forgotten place, a land where little ever changes. Western guidebooks enthuse about the fact that, alone in East Asia, Burmese still wear traditional dress—longyi sarongs—and women wear thanaka, a chalky paste made from bark and applied to the face as a natural sunscreen. Visitors from neighboring nations see in Burma vestiges of the slower, seemingly more relaxed life common forty years ago in Thailand or Singapore. They often single out the open-air teashops, often without electricity, where customers spend hours sipping warm green tea and eating samosas and mohinga noodles beneath a skyline of gold-encrusted temples and crumbling colonial facades.

If visitors know anything about this country of some 55 million people, it’s that for nearly five decades Burma was ruled by a military regime. The junta outlasted nearly every other army in the region, leaving Burma, until the election held in 2010, among the few remaining military dictatorships in the developing world. And Burma’s generals seemed to conform to every image of thuggish men in green. In 1989 they locked up opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), decisively won Burma’s only free election in decades the next year, and then they ignored the outcome. They oversaw massive infrastructure projects built with forced labor, and adopted an acronym for the government—SLORC (later changed)—that sounded like a James Bond villain. They dominated a state media that, in its unswerving fealty to the regime and its bombastic attacks on critics and outsiders, made the Soviet-era Pravda look as flashy and open-minded as Vanity Fair.

The leader of the junta, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, was a man with little formal education who rarely traveled outside Burma or met Westerners. He stashed the country’s wealth overseas while spending minimal amounts at home on health and public education. A leaked video of the wedding of his daughter in 2006 showed her draped in diamonds, and she reportedly received more than $50 million worth of gifts from well-wishers. Than Shwe seemed to make decisions with little real analysis. In November 2005, with no warning, he moved Burma’s entire government from Rangoon, the largest city, to a desolate town in the baking central plains, which the regime named Naypyidaw. Some Burmese alleged that Than Shwe had acted on the advice of his favorite fortuneteller. Others claimed that he had moved the government to Naypyidaw—which, besides being the only town in the region with reliable electricity, was to be ringed by bunkers—in case the United States invaded Burma, a highly unlikely event.

Many foreign officials, writers and companies concluded that the generals were crazy, and that their backward country would never change. “You cannot reason with those chaps,” a Singaporean diplomat who had spent considerable time in Burma told me. “They don’t act like other countries.” Cables written by American diplomats and released by WikiLeaks show that the US embassy viewed Than Shwe as a paranoid leader completely out of touch with his own country, not to mention the rest of the world.

In fall 2007 tens of thousands of Buddhist monks, the most respected figures in Burmese society, rose up against the government, marching through the streets of Rangoon. The Saffron Revolution appeared to have taken the government by surprise, but officials wasted no time in dispersing the protests and raiding the monasteries, locking up some monks and beating and killing others. Meanwhile, in eastern and northeastern Burma, the army allegedly launched campaigns of mass rape, looting and wholesale burning of ethnic minority villages.

Because Burma has seemed so hopeless, and to Western leaders so strategically and economically unimportant, Western policy-makers for years have chosen to isolate it, something never attempted with China or Saudi Arabia, countries with terrible human rights records but where either Western companies have made sizable investments or Western politicians have built strategic alliances. Suu Kyi’s resolute stand for human rights and support for sanctions, broadcast by celebrity advocates and a global network of Burma human rights groups, have only added to Western pressure for isolation. (By contrast, the Dalai Lama, probably the only rights advocate as well-known as Suu Kyi, advises Westerners interested in Tibet to travel there to witness Chinese oppression.) In 1997 the United States imposed sanctions on Burma, barring American firms from making new investments in the country. The sanctions have since been tightened, and in an era of American political gridlock they continue to enjoy the rarest of things, bipartisan support: last year, the Senate renewed the sanctions by a vote of 99 to 1. Europe followed suit, imposing its own version of sanctions.

And yet the portrayal of Burma as isolated and unchanging, its leaders thuggish and crazy, is simplistic. Though the struggle between Suu Kyi and the government still draws most outside interest in Burma, the country is changing rapidly, and may possibly be entering its most optimistic period of reform in decades. Asian investors from China, India, Thailand, South Korea and other nations are pouring capital into Burma. India and China are competing for Burma’s ports, rails, roads, resources and favor. This attention could finally help the country develop, and even resolve its political deadlock; on the other hand, the influx of foreign money, migrants and munitions could exacerbate Burma’s serious internal conflicts, leading to worse inequality and even a new civil war. But whatever happens, Burma’s generals are not just standing back and watching. Far from being stupid or crazy, they have shown themselves to be savvy, skillful politicians, repeatedly playing Western leaders for fools.

* * *

Partly because of its long isolation, Burma has been a difficult place to research for many foreign academics, and its sclerotic education system has been an impediment for any Burmese wanting to develop the skills to become a capable historian. Alone among Burmese writers, Thant Myint-U, a 45-year-old historian educated at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Cambridge (where he has also taught), has gained international renown, and his perspective on the country holds considerable weight. He is also the grandson of U Thant, the third secretary general of the United Nations and a revered Burmese diplomat.

In his writing and interviews, Thant Myint-U has become the foremost advocate of a new Western engagement with Burma. In The River of Lost Footsteps (2006), a compelling blend of memoir and Burmese history, he argued that a country as ethnically diverse as Burma, patched together artificially by the British and having few unifying structures when it gained independence in 1948, all but required strong, centralized rule. It ultimately materialized in 1962, when after a succession of weak, unstable elected governments the armed forces seized power. This strand of Thant Myint-U’s argument was understandably controversial. He seemed to be suggesting that Burma had not been ready for democracy, even though many of its equally diverse neighbors, which also had been left in ramshackle condition by the British, had come to enjoy democratic rule and high growth. He appeared to go out of his way to minimize the enormous appeal to the Burmese of Suu Kyi and the NLD, essentially calling them irrelevant, even though Suu Kyi remains by far the most popular public figure in Burma. He sometimes seemed to blame Suu Kyi for the lack of dialogue between her and the generals, even though during most of the past two decades she has languished under house arrest.

But beyond apologetics for military rule, Thant Myint-U made some powerful arguments in The River of Lost Footsteps for changing Western policy on Burma. Most fundamentally, he argued that fifteen years of isolation achieved few results: the generals who were in power in the mid-1990s, when Western nations imposed sanctions, remained so in the late 2000s. He revealed Burma’s suffering, though he failed to acknowledge that it has been caused as much by the junta’s economic misrule as by international isolation. Still, it didn’t help that Burma has received only a fraction of the aid of neighboring Laos, run by an equally repressive regime. Burma has one of the worst HIV/AIDS crises in Asia, and many areas of the country have life expectancy and infant mortality rates that rival the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Where China Meets India, a sequel to The River of Lost Footsteps, Thant Myint-U advances the second part of his argument for changing Western policy: isolation is useless because Burma is changing anyway, becoming a bridge between two rising global giants. Writing of his travels through the borderlands of China, India and Burma, Thant Myint-U hopes to demonstrate how this region of Asia, home to more than 600 million people, is integrating, and how Burma will be at the center of it. If the West does not join Asian nations in aiding, investing in and interacting with the Burmese government, he argues, the power of Burma’s leaders will remain undiminished and the West will be hampered strategically. It will lose access to the Indian Ocean and other trade routes as well as to important sources of petroleum, and it will lack leverage over Burma’s government, which has the second-biggest army in Southeast Asia, a worrisomely close relationship with North Korea and, possibly, nuclear ambitions. But if Western nations do engage with Burma, they can benefit from the new Asian trade, aid and investment flowing into Burma, and help ensure that it benefits the Burmese people rather than only their rulers.

In Where China Meets India Thant Myint-U is on less sure ground than in The River of Lost Footsteps. In the sections focusing on Burma, he remains a fluid storyteller and sharp polemicist, able to blend vivid anecdotes of his youth with policy arguments and analysis of the country’s rich history. He speaks the language; he understands how Burmese history has shaped the country’s relationships among ethnic groups and between the military and civilian politicians; and he expertly explains the country’s complex past as a crossroads of cultural, ethnic and religious influences from China and India. If he sometimes offers too much detailed history of Burma’s wild northeastern hinterlands, he exquisitely captures how and why this region, where stark valleys and mountains have divided ethnic groups for centuries, has resisted centralized government. For the Rawang, one of the people living in these highlands, “even salt is a treasured commodity, and for salt they will hunt the few tigers left in the valleys.” But when Thant Myint-U travels to the Indian and Chinese regions along the Burmese border to examine the new Asian integration from the other side, his confidence and storytelling skills often falter. Unable to speak Chinese, and far less familiar with China’s Yunnan province or India’s northeastern states (an area rarely visited even by Indian writers), he too often recycles tropes and stereotypes, or provides long summaries of recent Chinese and Indian history that add little to his book. He even succumbs to one of the oldest China-travelers’ tricks, reciting and mocking the strange English translations of menu items in China.

In the 1950s and early ’60s, newly independent Burma briefly seemed like a potential success story. It had abundant natural resources and an educated middle class. Even today, despite years of grinding poverty, it remains a society of bibliophiles: the bookstalls in central Rangoon, selling tattered copies of old Penguin classics, attract far more interest than similar stalls in wealthier neighbors like Thailand. In the 1950s the World Bank considered Burma one of the countries in East Asia most likely to thrive. But after the military takeover in 1962, paranoid dictator Ne Win imposed what he called the Burmese Way to Socialism. Almost all industry was nationalized. Many foreigners were thrown out, and visitors were permitted entry only on short-term transit visas. “Rangoon in those days—in the late 1970s and early 1980s—seemed entirely cut off from the late twentieth century,” Thant Myint-U recalls. “There were few telephones or cars on the streets, almost no television…o supermarkets or modern shops of any kind…. Rangoon was like a big empty movie set.” Ne Win’s rule had destroyed the economy. Inflation soared, and millions of Burmese fled the country, with many taking jobs as house cleaners or unregistered factory laborers in Thailand. Fearing that schools were becoming gathering places for protest movements, the Burmese regime closed most of the universities for years.

In 1988 a deteriorating economy and rising inflation sparked massive popular protests. Ne Win officially stepped down, and after the brief jubilation of the 1990 victory, Burmese politics turned dark again. Suu Kyi was back under house arrest, then released briefly in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, and then jailed again. The NLD stagnated under enormous repression, with many of its frontline members jailed or exiled, and its leaders aging. News of Suu Kyi and her party disappeared from the state press. When I visited the organization’s dilapidated headquarters in Rangoon several years ago, I found only elderly men in faded but carefully creased longyis sitting around a few battered tables. On University Avenue, where Suu Kyi’s lakeside house is located, stony-faced army officers immediately turned me away.

Also in the early 2000s, international aid organizations trying to work in Burma often found their efforts stymied, with the government either skimming much of their assistance or refusing to give Western aid workers access to populations in need. Mobile phones were essentially banned; the regime made them so expensive that only a few rich people and government insiders could buy them. The Internet was available only in a few large cities, and even then was heavily filtered and monitored.

But in the past five years, the isolation has begun to crack. In the sections of Where China Meets India devoted to Burma, Thant Myint-U captures well a country warily but determinedly opening up to the world. In Ruili, along the Burma–China border, he finds a prosperous, modern town. In the 1990s and early 2000s, when I visited it, Ruili had become infamous in both Burma and China as a destitute, wild place full of underground casinos, prostitution, heroin and AIDS. Emaciated addicts lay sprawled in alleyways, and shops sold little other than basic necessities and illicit jade. Today Thant Myint-U finds Ruili, on both sides of the border, almost sedate: well-to-do Burmese traders stroll streets lined with palms and upscale storefronts displaying DVD players and golf clubs. Chinese tourists pose for photographs in Ruili’s central square, or hunt for karaoke bars rather than a heroin fix.

This growth and cautious change is apparent in Burma’s largest cities as well. Mandalay, the second city and the last seat of Burma’s monarchy, was until recently a forlorn town. The generals had built an ugly concrete replica of the old walled royal palace, but it attracted few visitors, and the decrepit shops along many streets stocked goods coated in the dust of the long hot season. But today, central Mandalay looks more like Beijing. Massive indoor shopping malls dominate the central skyline, surrounded by new hotels and coffee shops catering to Chinese businessmen and upscale young Burmese. Late-model sedans and new pickups jostle for space on increasingly crowded roads.

Though the regime had begun to abandon the Burmese Way to Socialism in the 1990s, in recent years it has stepped up the pace of liberalization. Last year it privatized many creaking industries. Some of these state assets were delivered into the hands of a small group of regime cronies and family members; one former American diplomat with long experience in Burma said that rather than a military regime, the country is becoming a kind of “mafia state” with tycoons similar to the oligarchs of post-Soviet Russia. In a country with a per capita income of less than $3,000 at purchasing power parity, these nouveau riche cruise around Mandalay and Rangoon in tricked-up SUVs with tinted windows. Burma’s richest man, a tycoon named Tay Za who has close links to the regime, controls a fortune worth at least $1 billion and treats visitors to displays of his many luxury cars.

Still, the economic changes have also slowly opened up space for ordinary Burmese entrepreneurs, some of whom have been able to piggyback on the Chinese and Indian capital entering the country. According to several estimates, as many as 1 million Chinese migrants have moved to the area around Mandalay in the past ten years, and the number appears to be growing by the day. With Burma’s banks completely unreliable, Burmese businesspeople, as well as Chinese migrants, have turned to informal Chinese lenders for cash. Chinese and Indian businesspeople can provide skills and training unavailable in Burma; new Chinese-run supermarkets and electronics stores are bringing to the country a range of products unavailable just five years ago. Chinese tourists are flocking not only to Ruili but also to the cities of central Burma, and in the future the country’s long, pristine coastlines could become beach resorts. Though Burma’s official economic statistics are notoriously exaggerated, they do reflect a general trend of solid, sustained growth. Burma’s currency, the kyat, was once so worthless that shopkeepers preferred to trade for food, soap or other goods. It is now gaining in value against the US dollar. This past year, Burma received some $20 billion in foreign investment, according to reports in the Diplomat, a leading Asia publication.

This economic opening appears to have carried over into politics. Perhaps recognizing that they need to allow some degree of political openness in order to create the stability that even Chinese and Thai investors desire, Burma’s generals have retreated over the past year. In November 2010 the government held a national election for a new Parliament, the first since the annulled 1990 election. Though the election was hardly free and fair—army-backed parties enjoyed enormous advantages, and Suu Kyi’s repressed NLD chose not to contest the election—it was not a complete disaster. A small group of democratic-minded politicians, who had broken away from the NLD, won seats in Parliament and have offered genuine parliamentary criticism of the government for the first time in decades. The generals officially stepped into the background, and a civilian government, led by a potentially reformist former general named Thein Sein, took over governing. Thein Sein enlisted the aid of a close ally of Suu Kyi, and he called on all Burmese exiles—many of whom had fled because of political repression—to return to the country for a new, more open era. Thein Sein even admitted that Burma had fallen badly behind its Asian neighbors, a tacit signal of his belief that years of military rule had been disastrous.

In recent months the pace of reform in Burma has sped up rapidly, shocking even longtime observers, and making some wonder whether the country has finally reached its moment of real democratization, and whether Thein Sein is a Southeast Asian F.W. de Klerk. Released from house arrest in the days after the election, Suu Kyi met with Thein Sein and has since launched a dialogue with the government. Even many ardent human rights activists say that this appears to be the most optimistic time in Burma since at least 1990. Suu Kyi began traveling around the country. The opposition leader gave an interview to the Burmese press for the first time in decades; the publication, a news journal, quickly sold out. She has since been appearing regularly in the local press, and vendors on the streets of Rangoon and other cities sell photographs and other memorabilia showing Suu Kyi’s face, which just a few years ago would have landed them in jail. Publications not focusing on politics have increasingly been able to go to press without running their articles by censors. The government has invited officials from the International Monetary Fund and other big Western donors to come to Burma and offer suggestions for reforms. It has established a national human rights body. This past autumn, the Burmese censorship chief proposed that all censorship be lifted. Burmese officials invited Suu Kyi to attend the annual national ceremony of Martyrs’ Day on July 19, commemorating the assassination of leaders of Burma’s independence movement. Most notably, in October the government announced an amnesty for more than 6,000 prisoners, including approximately 200 accused of political crimes. It was the most substantial amnesty in years; the government also said that it was ready to work with Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Suu Kyi has declared herself satisfied with her talks with the government, and seems extremely optimistic about Burma’s future. She has publicly stated that she believes Thein Sein is sincere about his desire for reform. Freed again to enter politics, Suu Kyi says she plans to run in the next parliamentary by-elections, which she will surely win; a victory would put her in Parliament for the first time, the equivalent of Nelson Mandela going straight from Robben Island to a seat in the center of power.

Why have Burma’s rulers allowed this seeming opening, and why have China and India made substantial investments in a country still notorious for economic mismanagement and opaque decision-making? Than Shwe is older and frailer than in the 1990s and early 2000s, and, according to several diplomats, may simply want to be sure that he can retire in peace and with his and his family’s great stolen wealth untouched, rather than face some kind of democratic revolution in the future, which might result in his arrest. He surely does not forget that the former military leader, Ne Win, was put under house arrest at the end of his life, along with his daughter. By moving into the background while keeping his wealth, Than Shwe might be able to avoid the same ending. And because Suu Kyi has not expressed support for prosecutions of former military rulers, the regime may believe that a slow, gradual reform process with her involved is its best bet to retain significant amounts of money and power behind the scenes.

And as Thant Myint-U notes, although urban areas of China and India have benefited enormously from decades of growth, the outlying rural regions of both countries have benefited much less, and today income inequality in China is like of that in Latin American nations like Brazil. Most worrying to Chinese leaders, it is in these poorer, more rural areas that the majority of China’s thousands of protests occur each year. Eastern India is almost as much of a threat to the government in Delhi: it is home to numerous separatist insurgencies, many of them fed for years by guns and men migrating across the porous border with Burma. Burma’s poverty and instability have had a similar effect on Yunnan. For years, heroin and methamphetamines have flowed from Burma’s wild northeast into southwestern China, bringing with them high rates of HIV, which is one reason Yunnan was the first region in the country to face a severe heroin crisis.

To develop rural India and China, and to reduce the possibility that poor, unstable Burma will further destabilize their border regions, the governments in Delhi and Beijing must create new development, trade routes and markets for exports from their rural provinces. The routes through Burma to new ports on its coast are the shortest and most obvious path. “Yunnan will be made into China’s gateway to South Asia and southeast Asia,” one Chinese businessman told Thant Myint-U. It is a sentiment I have heard repeated, ad nauseam, by Chinese officials and academics. China has proposed a high-speed rail line to connect it to Burma’s coast, and has started to revive the old “Burma Road” from World War II, a decaying link across the north.

Burma’s long coastline, astride the contested Indian Ocean, also has strategic significance for China and India. In Monsoon, Robert Kaplan speculates that in a century that will be dominated by Asia, sea power, more than land power, will become critical, as Asia’s contested areas are shared bodies of water like the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean rather than the kind of internal land masses fought over by European powers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some strategists, including Thant Myint-U, see a new “Great Game” emerging in Asia, with the region’s rising superpowers competing for sea lanes and resources, with Burma in the middle. The most conspiracy-minded Western strategists see China building a “string of pearls”—a series of ports, bases, satellite states and intelligence-gathering outposts throughout South and Southeast Asia—that will eventually usher in Chinese dominance. The reality will likely be somewhat more mundane: China is indeed courting allies across South and Southeast Asia, and building up some facilities, but is still decades from challenging the United States as the region’s dominant naval power. Many nations in the region want a balance between Beijing and Washington rather than to choose one or the other.

And then there is oil. China and India lack significant domestic deposits, and the Chinese government remains terrified that if it ever clashed with the United States, Washington could use its navy and alliances to shut off shipments of oil to China, many of which travel through the narrow Malacca Strait in Southeast Asia. Driven by this fear, China has made its own deals with traditional suppliers like Saudi Arabia while also cultivating newer oil producers, particularly those where, because of Western sanctions, Chinese firms have an open playing field. Chinese companies have begun to build an oil pipeline that will soon transport roughly 240,000 barrels of oil to China from Burma. Add to that the enormous power generated by new Chinese-built dams in Burma, and the country has become of vital importance to Beijing. Western oil companies, too, barred from new investments unless they had made them before 1997, see in the Burmese fields a potential future gold mine, if US–Burma relations improve.

Contrary to the belief of many Western officials, this influx of Chinese money and businesspeople has not made Burma a satellite of Beijing. To be sure, China’s vast investment and aid in Burma has helped the regime and the country, and Beijing has repeatedly protected Burma from diplomatic censure at the United Nations. China has become a major arms supplier to the Burmese regime, and in recent years a parade of Chinese senior officials have arrived in Rangoon to pledge their undying friendship. But Burma’s rulers fear China as much, if not more, than any other foreign power. China lies right on their doorstep, and before Beijing launched its own reforms in the 1970s, it supported communist rebels inside Burma. Many of Burma’s top generals cut their teeth as younger army officers fighting these China-backed rebels; according to Burmese analysts, several of the generals retain a visceral hatred of China. Among average Burmese, appreciation of the cash, goods and tourists flowing into the country from China is mitigated by fear, and anger, that Chinese products now dominate Burmese markets, and that Chinese firms are buying up Burma’s natural resources, often while employing Chinese, rather than Burmese, laborers to handle the excavation. These resource deals are also destroying Burma’s environment and the livelihoods of many Burmese: tens of thousands of families have been forcibly relocated, with minimal compensation, to make way for the oil and gas pipelines, among other development projects, while some of the hydropower dams reportedly have been constructed with little care for the protection of local rivers or watersheds. In one sign of this rising resentment, an argument that erupted between Burmese and Chinese businessmen in Mandalay in June over a botched gem deal disintegrated into a tense standoff and near-riot.

Worried that China had secured an advantage in the competition for Burma’s natural resources, ports and sea lanes, India has in recent years reversed its policy. In the 1990s, as Thant Myint-U notes, some Indian officials had tried to assist Burmese democracy activists, and India’s then–defense minister George Fernandes, a prominent human rights advocate, even allowed some Burmese exiles to take shelter in his family compound. But soon Delhi shifted its Burma policy 180 degrees. Rather than criticize the Burmese junta, it now engaged the generals under a policy called Look East, hosting Than Shwe on a state visit during which, with no obvious irony, he visited the site of Mahatma Gandhi’s cremation. India ignored international resolutions condemning the Burmese regime’s massive human rights abuses, and launched a policy to boost Indian investment in Burma, particularly in the petroleum industry. Delhi began providing arms to Burma, and in fall 2007, during the Saffron Revolution in Rangoon, India’s petroleum minister traveled to the country to sign new agreements.

But while Burma could become contested territory, as Thant Myint-U notes, it also increasingly links the Asian giants. For decades, East Asia and South Asia were divided by the Himalayas, and by the poverty and ruggedness of Burma. No longer. China’s and India’s grand plans to build overland rail and road links through Burma as part of a new Asian architecture could, one day far in the future, link Asia into a single market like the European Union—assuming China and India can peacefully coexist.

The Obama administration came into office determined to rethink America’s relationships with the world, and Burma was no exception. Responding to the arguments of sanctions critics like Thant Myint-U, as well as the real humanitarian need in Burma and the worry that Washington could lose ground to Beijing in Asia, the White House early on commissioned a review of its Burma policy, and announced that officials would begin trying to cautiously engage the Burmese regime. This decision did not please most lawmakers in Congress, which largely determines US policy on Burma. Congress upheld tough sanctions and repeatedly warned administration officials not to move quickly on any rapprochement with Burma. Democratic Senator James Webb, the influential head of the Asia subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, did not support sanctions, and his criticism of them revealed how the administration’s push for engagement with Burma was grounded in fear. “We are in a situation where if we do not push some form of constructive [American] engagement [with the regime], Burma is going to basically become a province of China,” Webb told a group of reporters. “It does us no good to be out of there.” Webb and others also believed, with some good reason, that the Burmese leadership desired new American engagement in order to provide some strategic balance with their dependence on China.

Webb and advocates of engagement have delivered other warnings. Though there have been rumors for several years that Burma’s generals had nuclear ambitions, over the past two years they have gained substance. A report on Burma’s nuclear ambitions, aired on Al Jazeera and relying on information from military defectors, suggested that the Burmese government may be mining uranium and launching programs to build the technology needed to make weapons-grade uranium and other nuclear components. The report concluded that North Korea was the major outside state assisting Burma. Many of these allegations were supported by an analysis of Burma’s nuclear ambitions produced by the respected Institute for Science and International Security. ISIS analyzed satellite photos of a range of suspicious facilities in Burma and said that some could be storing technologies—machine tools that could be used to make centrifuge parts—that seemed to have no real use in the civilian economy. Western and Southeast Asian intelligence organizations have found that Burma was importing parts believed to be for a ballistic missile program. They also have intercepted suspicious North Korean ships docking in Burma that appear to be offloading machine tools that would have no use other than in a nuclear or missile program. American officials, who once had played down any chance of Burmese nuclear ambitions, took note; privately, many worried that if the United States did not take a closer interest in Burma, the country would be able, with North Korean help, to build a weapons program in hidden bunkers in the center of the country. In November, Senator Richard Lugar, a longtime foreign policy expert, said that his office had had information for at least five years that Burma may be trying to build a nuclear program with the help of North Korea.

In 2011, for the first time in years, senior administration officials visited Burma, and the White House appointed a special envoy to coordinate American policy toward the country. Since the reformist moves by Thein Sein, American officials have hinted that they might try to remove sanctions and take other steps toward rapprochement. In a sign of this quickly building engagement, President Obama announced in November that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would visit Burma later that month, the first trip of such a senior American official to the country in more than fifty years. During the trip, officially classified as a fact-finding mission, Clinton sat for a lengthy meeting with Thein Sein and praised his initial reform efforts. She also held a long meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi. Following the visit, the Obama administration announced a small initial aid package for Burma—likely less than $2 million—and promised not to block World Bank and IMF programs that might provide monitoring and assistance to the country. Though these were small steps, they were much more than the United States had attempted in dealing with Burma in two decades, and administration officials suggested that if reform continued, the United States might normalize ties with the Burmese government.

In some ways, Thant Myint-U’s hopes for Western policy are starting to be fulfilled. Looking to the United States, European nations have also begun reconsidering their Burma policies. Some American companies, such as construction giant Caterpillar, have again begun to consider investing in Burma, in the likelihood that sanctions will at some point be lifted. Like Thant Myint-U, they argue that having a greater diversity of investors in the country will benefit average people, who now have to rely on investment from China, which comes with minimal adherence to labor and environmental standards. Before sanctions, Western investors in Burma did not have a sterling reputation. Some had been linked to the army’s abuses, including forced labor along their pipelines. Yet Burma today is one of the few countries in the world where the United States still enjoys wide popularity, in part because the polarizing global debates about the Iraq War did not circulate there, and in part because many Burmese think that American aid, investment and closer relations would provide a critical balance to growing dependence on China.

* * *

And yet, as happens so often in US policy, the danger is that the pendulum could swing too far in the other direction, too quickly. Suu Kyi’s release, the fall 2010 election, the statements by the new president Thein Sein, the call for Burmese exiles to return home—these are many promising signs, but the Obama administration has taken a gamble by sending Clinton to the country. It could wind up embarrassed, as the Bush administration was after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Libya and was embraced by Muammar el-Qaddafi. The Burmese regime has shown promising signs before, and military leaders still wield the most power. The military officially holds one-quarter of the seats in Parliament, military-backed parties control most of the rest and current and former military officers dominate the new civilian ministries. If Suu Kyi is truly planning to rebuild the NLD, she could be playing a dangerous game, as Than Shwe reportedly still despises her. When Suu Kyi previously tried to rebuild the NLD in 2003, she visited the district of Depayin. Hordes of government-sponsored thugs attacked her motorcade with knives and clubs, killing at least seventy of her colleagues. Suu Kyi was saved only because her driver accelerated through the mob.

In the northeast and other ethnic minority areas, meanwhile, the Burmese government appears to be cracking down harder. In recent months it has torn up fragile cease-fire agreements it signed more than a decade ago with many ethnic minority militias, sparking renewed conflict, abuses by the army and large-scale refugee flows. Already, although Thein Sein has proposed a cease-fire for all the insurgencies and talks on permanent peace deals, the government has at the same time gone back to fighting with the Kachin Independence Army; if other militias join in, a large swath of the country could once again be consumed by civil war, extinguishing any hopes for economic and political development.

That the Burmese generals might not be sincere could hardly come as a surprise, and yet supposedly savvy, sophisticated Western leaders have been fooled before. This time Thein Sein looks far more sincere than anyone in the past, and Suu Kyi has indicated that she believes he is committed to pushing reform forward. Some skepticism is warranted. In the mid-1990s, and again in the early 2000s, some Burmese officials appeared dedicated to reform. At that time, the government also held limited dialogue with Suu Kyi, briefly freed her from house arrest and courted Western investors and officials. Pleased by these seemingly positive developments, the outside world responded by pouring in investment, allowing Burma to join important regional organizations and stepping up aid. And both times, when the generals had gotten what they wanted from the West, they slammed the door shut: Suu Kyi was tossed back in jail, investments were nationalized, political opponents were targeted and aid organizations were forced out of the country. Reform-minded officials were placed under house arrest or jailed. Still, the recent reforms are more substantial than in those previous eras of glasnost, and Burma’s future seems more up in the air.

Today the generals again seem to want a degree of international legitimacy, greater investment from the West and possibly higher standing in regional organizations. But despite Thant Myint-U’s theories, it’s hard to be optimistic that they will trade away their control of the country for these gains.

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ထြန္းေနေအာင္(ျမစ္မခ)

ဒီဇင္ဘာ(၃၀)ရက္ ေန႔လည္ပိုင္းက ျမန္မာ႔ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္မွ ေမတၱာညႊန္႔ဂိုေဒါင္မီးေလာင္မႈ႔ေၾကာင့္ အိုးမဲ႔အိမ္မဲ႔ျဖစ္သြားသည္႔ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအား တစ္နာရီ၀န္းက်င္ ခန္႔ အားေပးစကားေျပာခဲ႔ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။

By KATE KELLY

Dickson wants to complete his education in a western country and help improve the lives of his students (Kate Kelly)


Dickson Hoo is 24 years old, a grade nine mathematics teacher and deputy principal at a mission school. He’s a bright young man who knows all his students by their first names. But instead of air-conditioned classrooms and computer screens, he teaches quadratics on a donated blackboard with a ragged piece of chalk while his students jostle for a place on rough wooden benches, their feet dangling above a well-swept dirt floor.

Dickson has lived and taught in Mae La refugee camp for the past five years. Mae La is the biggest of nine refugee camps peppered along the Thai border with Burma and overflowing with around 50,000 traumatised, desperate people.

Dickson’s father Saw Tar Hoo is a pastor, a tall solemn man who fled Rangoon with his wife Daisy and their children in 2006 to escape the brutal Burmese military regime. Dickson and his family belong to the Karen ethnic group, which has suffered at the hands of the Burmese government since the country’s independence from British rule in 1948.

The UN Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) reports over 90 per cent of Mae La’s refugees are of Karen ethnic origin and most have fled attacks in southeastern Burma.

Dickson says his students, around 1,300 boys and girls ranging from 11 to 20 years of age, are some of the lucky ones.

“There are still so many children in the camp who cannot come to school because we simply don’t have any more room for them,” he says sadly.

He proudly shows me their small library with rough wooden shelves stacked with books donated from various NGOs. A young Karen girl is sitting in the corner, bent over her books. Dickson says she’s busy studying for the end of year exams, although he sadly admits that for most of his students there are no further opportunities once they’ve finished their schooling.

“Around one or two per cent of our students may have the opportunity to go to a third country with their families and of course, that’s what everyone here is hoping for,” he says.

Dickson’s elder brother, Nickson, was one of those fortunate to be accepted in the last round of the UNHCR’s resettlement program and now lives in the US. His eyes light up as he tells me how he dreams of following his brother and finishing his own education at a western university.

“I want to get a good education, to become a qualified teacher then come back here to help my Karen people,” he tells me.

He had only just completed the second year of a mathematics degree at West Rangoon University in Burma’s former capital before being forced to abandon his studies, home and childhood friends when his family fled for the safety of the refugee camp.

Dickson says he tried to register himself and his family with the UNHCR and apply for the resettlement program as soon as they arrived in Mae La refugee camp on Boxing Day 2006, but was told by camp authorities the UN was not taking on any new refugees. He says he’s confused and angry because of conflicting information from camp authorities. “In 2007, they told me to wait until 2010, I went back later and they said 2011. Now they’ve told me maybe we can register in 2013 or 2014.”

One camp official told him to stop asking because the UN is not taking on any more refugees. “‘You’ll stay in this camp for the rest of your life,’ he told me.”

Nobody has told Dickson that unless the UNHCR can convince the Thai government to reopen its refugee pre-screening and registration program, his future and that of almost 70,000 other displaced Burmese, is in limbo.

Because his family arrived after the Thai government suspended its screening program in late 2005, he does not have official UNHCR refugee status and therefore cannot apply for third country resettlement. It also means he cannot leave the confines of the camp, go to a library, an internet café or the UNHCR field office in nearby Mae Sot because he does not possess an official UNHCR registration card, which is the only protection that refugees have against arrest and detention by Thai authorities.

Aid agency, the Thai Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), reported in October 2011 that almost 70,000 of some 150,000 of residents across all nine camps are unregistered refugees and most new arrivals since 2005 are not registered.

The UNHCR has resettled over 58,000 refugees in third countries since 2005, mostly the US, Canada and Australia, in a bid to alleviate the congestion in the camps. Some, including Mae La camp, have been operating for more than 20 years.

However, TBBC reports show that despite the mass resettlement program, the population of the camps has remained constant as thousands more displaced Burmese seek refuge from persecution.

However, Dickson and many others hoping to forget the torments of their past and start new lives in a third country do not realise that unless they registered before 2005, they have no chance.

The Thai government has been under pressure from Burmese authorities to close down the camps, giving vulnerable residents no choice but to return to the uncertainty and persecution from which they originally fled.

In April, Thai authorities said they had a three-year plan to close all nine refugee camps, something TBBC deputy executive director Sally Thompson says is unrealistic and premature.

“We all want the camps to close and for the people to return to their homes. But that can only happen when the situation in Burma improves and people are guaranteed safety and security. At the moment people do not feel safe to return,” Thompson says.

But Dickson’s father is growing weary with the desperation and hopelessness of their situation. “It’s like house arrest, we are prisoners here,” he says sadly, staring at the floor. “The Thai authorities won’t allow us to leave the camp but we can’t go back to Burma because we will be killed.”

Nestled at the base of a looming mountain range which is all that stands between the Thai border with Burma, Mae La refugee camp bakes quietly in the heat of the December sun.

Run by the Thai Ministry of Interior, the camp is surrounded by barbed wire and high bamboo fences topped with jagged spikes. A young man in uniform lounges in the sparse shade offered by a makeshift guard post.

A few hundred metres down the road at an official checkpoint, uniformed and armed authorities scrutinise the comings and goings of every vehicle. Burmese refugees caught without an official identity card face imprisonment and deportation.

But this hasn’t deterred a group of youths standing defiantly by the side of the road, around the corner and out of sight of the Thai guards. Theirs is not the bright and shiny world of shopping malls, video games and cinemas.

Even if they did manage to hitch a ride some 60 kilometres to the sleepy border town of Mae Sot, avoiding the various police checkpoints along the way, with no money and no understanding of the Thai language, they would be targets for exploitation by unscrupulous employers who prefer Burmese workers because they can pay them less than a third of the usual going daily rate, around 60 Baht, or $US2 per day.

Dickson says while people know the dangers, some prefer to take their chances because they are desperate and have lost hoping waiting for help in the camp. “Some people have been here 20 years … some have been resettled but so many of us are still here, waiting and wasting our lives.

“If I didn’t have my school … and my family here with me, sometimes I don’t know what I would do,” he says quietly. “Of course we want to go home … I want to see Burma, my country. But it’s not safe for us there.”

Then as a bell rings for the start of school, he squares his shoulders and follows a line of students inside the squat tin-roofed buildings for another day at High School Two, Mae La camp.

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Maungdaw, Arakan State: The concerned authority – District and Township administration offices- had banned again on prayer calling (Azan) with loudspeakers in Maungdaw on December 28, according to a religious leader from Maungdaw.

“The order was dispatched to village administration offices by U Aung Myint Soe, the district administration officer and U Kyi San, township administration officer.”

“Some of the village administration officers from Burma border security force (Nasaka) area number 6 were ordered to their villages not to use the loudspeakers while prayer calling (Azan) in the Mosques.”

U Than Htun,the village administration officer, Shwezar village had ordered not to use loudspeakers while prayer calling in the Mosques on December 27, according to an elder from the village.

“The massage was again called by Captain Hay Win Min Htun, the officer in charge of camp 14 under Nasaka area 6 while the Nasaka called meeting with village’s elders and villager administration officer on December 27.”

“We stopped to call with loudspeakers for prayer calling in the Mosques after the meeting in the Shwezar village tract.”

“It is the new civilian government styles for moving the discipline democracy which the head of the state U Thein Sein stated that freedoms of religious are available in the country, but the authorities are going to stop some systems of religious other than Buddhist in northern Arakan where Rohingya community who believed Islam are resided.”

The ruling party – Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) –promised and ensured the Rohingya community that will remove restriction on marriage, education, movement, building worships places when the party came to campaign for election 2010 in northern Arakan. But, the promised and ensured which given in the election were disappeared and more imposed restriction on Rohingya again.

“Burma persecutes the Rohingya, the minority Muslim group of northern Arakan, denying them citizenship and harassment and persecution of all Human Rights abuses.In particular, it said Rohingya women suffer at the hands of the government. Freedom House has reported mass military rapes of Rohingya women. Fearing for their lives, many of these women have fled the country to Bangladesh. According to UN Watch – a nonprofit NGO – stated a recent session on women’s rights of the Forum on Minority Issues of the UN Human Rights Council.

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The Burma Army continues to attack people in three townships of Ba Maw District, Kachin State: Mun Si Township, Shwegu Township and Ba Maw Township. On 16 December 2011, Burma Army soldiers killed a woman from Prang Kawng Village. The woman, 30-year-old Lamung Kaw Seng, suffered from a mental disability. As Burma Army troops approached the village, all the villagers fled except for Lamung Kaw Seng. When the soldiers found her, they killed her and threw her into a toilet pit.

Displaced Kachin children, 15 December 2011


Map showing area of report


Local people have left their homes and moved to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps near the international border because of the fighting, which continues to happen every day in this area. There are 6 IDPs camp along the border:
Yang Lu Camp
Law Hpai Camp
Hka Dawng Pa Camp
Nga Nawng Pa Camp
Na Kawng Kawng Camp
Lung Kawk Camp

Displaced people at Yang Lu IDP Camp, 17 December 2011




Law Hpai IDP Camp, 17 December 2011


Na Kawng Kawng IDP Camp, 16 December 2011


There are 3,998 people in those 6 IDPs camps. They arrived at the border area between 27 and 28 November.


There are 2,442 displaced people in 3 IDPs camps in Mun Si Township of Ba Maw District.

1) La Na Zup Camp

2) Dung Bung Camp

3) Manwing Camp

Displaced family at La Na Zup IDP Camp, 15 December 2011




Dung Bung IDP Camp, 16 December 2011


There are 7,058 IDPs from 123 villages that left their homes in Ba Maw, Shwegu and Mun Si Townships. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA, pro-democracy ethnic resistance) and WPN, a local Kachin humanitarian aid group, are taking care of these people by supplying food, medicine, warm clothes, and blankets, though the supplies are not enough to meet the needs. The most common illness for children under 5 years old is the common cold, and diarrhea is the most common illness for children above 5. Adults above 40 years old are especially suffering from high blood pressure. WPN is currently treating them. The children are not able to go to school.


The Burma Army started their offensive in this area by entering from northern Shan State in October with 500 troops from Light Infantry Battalions (LIB) 504 and 506 under Division 66. Later on the Burma Army sent reinforcements from Divisions 33, 77 and 99, totaling 2,000 troops at present. Burma Army troops are torturing and killing villagers, burning houses and rice barns, and destroying or stealing villagers' belongings. The Burma Army has divided into 4 or 5 columns and is attacking the KIA using 60mm, 82mm and 120 mm mortars; M79 guns; 0.5-caliber machine guns and other small arms, and using helicopters for food supplies. Specifically in these townships, the Burma Army is not building new camps, but is occupying the KIA's Battalion 27 Camp after taking it over. Currently there is not heavy fighting but small clashes continue every day. A total of over 30,000 Kachin people have been displaced.


CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS REPORT: In the recent report "Burma Army Continues Attacks in Kachin State as of 14 December 2011", the information in the first three paragraphs and the photo of the Burma Army mortar were collected by FBR teams on the ground in Kachin State. All information beginning with "On 8 October 2011," until the end is courtesy of Partners Relief and Development, compiled first-hand by Partners investigators. In the report only the photos had been credited to Partners.

God bless you,

The Free Burma Rangers’ (FBR) mission is to provide hope, help and love to internally displaced people inside Burma, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Using a network of indigenous field teams, FBR reports on human rights abuses, casualties and the humanitarian needs of people who are under the oppression of the Burma Army. FBR provides medical, spiritual and educational resources for IDP communities as they struggle to survive Burmese military attacks.

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Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – George Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundation, which works to promote democracy, human rights and freedom in the world, visited Inle Lake in Shan State on Wednesday. 

credit : Mizzima

မဂၤလာေတာင္ညြန္႔ျမိဳ႕နယ္ ကူးတို႔ဆိပ္ရပ္ကြက္တြင္ ေပါက္ကြဲမႈႏွင့္အတူ မီးေလာင္ကၽြမ္းမႈ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ABC စက္ဆန္းရိွ ကုန္ပစၥည္းသိုေလွာင္ရံု ဂိုေထာင္မ်ား ေပါက္ကြဲမီးေလာင္မႈၾကီးတစ္ခု ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ သည္။

ေပါက္ကြဲမီးေလာင္မႈေၾကာင့္ ေပ ၅၀ ၀န္းက်င္မႇ ၿပိဳက်ေနသည့္ ေနအိမ္မ်ား

အဆိုပါေပါက္ကြဲေလာင္ကၽြမ္းမႈၾကီးေၾကာင့္ ေဘးပတ္၀န္းက်င္အားလံုးရိွ ေနထိုင္သူမ်ား ထိခိုက္ဒဏ္ရာရရိွမႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ျပီး ေသဆံုးသူမ်ားလည္းရိွသည္။ ျဖစ္စဥ္အေသးစိတ္ႏွင့္ မည္မွ်ထိခိုက္ဆံုးရံႈးသည္ကို အတိအက် သိရိွရျခင္း မရိွေသးပါ။ ဒဏ္ရာရရိွသူမ်ားကို နီးစပ္ရာကားမ်ားျဖင့္ ရန္ကုန္ေဆးရံုၾကီးသို႔ ပို႔ေဆာင္ထားရေၾကာင္းလည္း သိရသည္။(ယခုအထိ မီးေလာင္ကၽြမ္းေနဆဲျဖစ္သည္။ ၂၉- ၁၂ - ၂၀၁၁ နံနက္ ၃ နာရီ ၄၀ မိနစ္အထိ )

ေပါက္ကြဲမႈေၾကာင့္ အုတ္တံတိုင္းနံရံမ်ား လြင့္စင္ထြက္ကာ ေပ ၅၀ ေက်ာ္ရႇိ ေနအိမ္မ်ား ေပ ၂၀၀ ၀န္းက်င္ အကြာရႇိ ေခ်ာင္းအတြင္း၌ရႇိေသာ စက္ေလႇႀကီးမ်ားပင္ထိခိုက္ပ်က္စီးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ အဆိုပါ ေပါက္ကြဲေလာင္ကြၽမ္းမႈကို ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ရႇိ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားတြင္ သိရႇိခံစားခဲ့ရေၾကာင္းလည္း သိရသည္။

ေပါက္ကြဲမီးေလာင္မႈေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့သည့္ က်င္းခ်ဳိင့္တစ္ခု

''ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔ အိပ္ေနတုန္း ၀ုန္းကနဲဆို အိမ္က ၿပိဳဆင္းသြားတယ္။ အိမ္ထဲကေန ကမန္းကတန္းထြက္ၿပီး နီးစပ္ရာမႇာ ျမစ္ကမ္းေဘးမႇာ ၀ပ္ေနရတယ္။ က်န္တဲ့သူတစ္ခ်ဳိ႕ကေတာ့ အုတ္နံရံစေတြ လြင့္ပ်ံ႕ထြက္လာတာနဲ႔ ထိခိုက္မိၿပီး ေသသူေသ၊ ဒဏ္ရာရသူရ၊ လဲသူလဲနဲ႔ ေနရာအႏႇံ႔ ရႇိခဲ့တယ္။ အဲဒီဂိုေထာင္ရဲ႕ ပတ္ပတ္လည္မႇာေနတဲ့သူအားလံုးနီးပါး ထိခိုက္ဒဏ္ရာရတယ္။ ဂိုေထာင္ေဘးက လမ္းျခားေနတဲ့ အိမ္ေတြေတာင္ ဘာမႇမသိ လိုက္ရဘဲ လြင့္ထြက္လာတဲ့ အပိုင္းအစေတြေၾကာင့္ ၿပိဳက်ကုန္တဲ့အထိ အရႇိန္က ျပင္းလြန္းတယ္။ ေခ်ာင္းတစ္ဖက္ကမ္း ေဒါပံုဘက္အျခမ္းမႇာေနတဲ့ သူေတြကိုေတာင္ လြင့္စင္လာတဲ့အပိုင္းအစေတြ ထိမႇန္ခဲ့တယ္လို႔ သိရတယ္'' ဟု ဂို ေထာင္ေဘးတြင္ ေနထိုင္ကာ ယခုျဖစ္စဥ္အား ကိုယ္ေတြ႕ႀကံဳေတြ႕ခဲ့သူတစ္ဦးက ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ ေနာက္ဆံုးရရႇိေသာ သတင္းမ်ားအရ ရန္ကုန္ျပည္သူ႔ေဆး႐ုံႀကီးတြင္ လတ္တေလာ စာရင္းေကာက္ခံမႈအရ ၁၄ ဦးေသဆံုး(က်ား ၇၊ မ ၄၊ မီးသတ္တပ္ဖြဲ႕၀င္ ၃ ဦး)ၿပီး ၅၅ ဦး ထိခိုက္ဒဏ္ရာ ရရႇိထားေၾကာင္း နံနက္ ၄ နာရီ ရရႇိေသာ သတင္းမ်ားအရ သိရႇိရသည္။

(ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၂၉ ရက္ေန႔ နံနက္ ၄ နာရီ ၄၅ မိနစ္) ထပ္မံသိရိွရေသာ သတင္းမ်ားအရ မီးေလာင္ကၽြမ္းမႈကို ျငိမ္းသတ္္ေနဆဲျဖစ္ျပီး ရန္ကုန္ျပည္သူ႔ေဆးရံုၾကီးသို႔ ေရာက္ရိွလာေသာ ဒဏ္ရာရသူမွာ ၈၀ ဦး ရိွေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။ ေသဆံုးသူမ်ားမွာ မီးသတ္တပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္ ၃ ဦးအပါအ၀င္ က်ား ၁၀ ဦး မ ၅ ဦး ရိွျပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။
















ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၂၉ ရက္။

9:00 AM (Update)

နံနက္ (၉)နာရီတြင္ သိရွိရေသာ သတင္းအရ ဒဏ္ရာရရွိသူ (၇၈) ဦး ရွိၿပီး၊ ေသဆံုးသူ (၁၇)ဦးရွိေၾကာင္း သိရွိပါသည္။ ဒဏ္ရာရသူ (၇၈)ဦးတြင္ (၃၃)မွာ မီသတ္တပ္ဖြဲ႕၀င္မ်ားၿဖစ္ၿပီး ေသဆံုးသူ (၁၇)ဦးအနက္ (၆)ဦးမွာ မီသတ္တပ္ဖြဲ႕၀င္မ်ား ၿဖစ္ေၾကာင္းသိရွိရသည္။ အခင္ၿဖစ္ပြားရာေနရာ၌ ပစၥည္းသိုေလွာင္ရံု (၃၇)လံုး ရွိသည့္အနက္ (၁၆)လံုးမွ မီးေလာင္ကြ်မ္းမွဳတြင္ ပါ၀င္သြားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။ မီးေလာင္ကြ်မ္းမွဳတြင္ မီးသတ္ယာဥ္ (၂)စီးလည္း ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။


9:15 AM (Update)

မီးေလာင္ကၽြမ္းမႈသည္ ၀ါယာေရွာ့ပ္ျဖစ္ရာမွ စတင္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ျပီး ၾကီးမားေသာေပါက္ကြဲမႈ ျဖစ္ပြားရျခင္းႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ားမွ တရား၀င္ သတင္းအတိအက် ထုတ္ျပန္ျခင္းမရွိေသးပါ။

ျဖစ္စဥ္အေသးစိတ္ႏွင့္ ေနာက္ဆံုးရအေျခအေနမ်ားကို ဆက္လက္ေဖာ္ျပသြားပါမည္။

More Picture here

credit :VOA , BurmaVJ, weekly media

 By Zin Linn,

Although President Thein Sein has issued an order dated 10-December to Burma’s Commander-in-Chief to stop the fighting against the KIO, the Burmese soldiers in the Kachin-frontline do not obey the presidential guidance so far. On the contrary, the war keeps going on and Kachin natives continue running and hiding for their lives in the jungle.

So, the observers consider that whether the military chief abides by the presidential order. Saying peace words as its policy, the government is raising its offensive against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) on the other hand. The Burma Army’s all-out offensives are becoming higher than ever in Kachin State.

The fighting seems ruthless as Burmese soldiers commit various crimes – such as looting, killing, raping and burning down the civilians’ villages – on this brutal front line. In fact, ordinary Kachin people are just naive citizens of the country and soldiers should spare their lives and belongings.

In recent months, several native women and girls were gang raped by Burmese soldiers. Many were killed after being raped. The soldiers raped and killed girls and women in front of their relatives. Many civilians were forced to work as porters or human shield for government forces.

More than 30,000 displaced victims have sought shelter at government-run camps in eastern Kachin State in mid-December, putting a strain on limited food supplies, mostly from local donors.

According to the BBC Burmese Service Radio, fighting are going on in the KIA 4th Brigade controlled area in Northern Shan State, since 25 December to date. As said by a KIA 4th Brigade commander Col. Zaw Rao, government troops fired with artilleries for eight rounds and they also used chemical weapons yesterday battle.

Some KIA fighters suffered dizziness and vomit due to government soldiers’ poisonous mortar shells, the KIA officer said. Although KIA’s side had no wounded persons, government troops had at least ten casualties in yesterday armed conflict, Col. Zaw Rao said.

In actual fact, President Thein Sein has released an order to halt fighting in the Kachin frontline since 10 December. But, during Christmas period, Col. Zaw Rao said that the government armed forces have continued open fire on KIA troops sporadically. It’s amazing that even though the president has ordered for ceasefire, the government forces on the frontline turn a deaf ear to his order, col. Zaw Rao told the BBC.

Hence, it is really essential for the president to try influencing on his armed forces to abide by the presidential instructions. And also, it’s time to end the civil war, particularly the war against KIA.

If Burmese troops have used chemical weapons, the president must resolutely order them to stop immediately. By doing so, president has to show the country is on the right transformation path. This act of using prohibited weapon breaks the Geneva Protocol which banned use of chemical and biological weapons in both civil and foreign conflicts. President Thein Sein’s government has to take responsibility for the use of such chemical weapons.

Meanwhile, President Thein Sein’s peacemaking team leader Aung Min exposed he has prepared to meet the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), the alliance of 11 armed groups in which Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) is a key member. He announced the plan during a meeting with Hkun Okker from PaO National Liberation Organization (PNLO), in Bangkok.

Burmese people are confused over the war between the KIA and Burma Army. While the president is speaking about the importance of national unity, his government army has been increasing the hostilities in ethnic Kachin areas.

So, it becomes a question among the societies, as the government soldiers disobey the guide-line of the country’s highest authoritative president. People are curious whether there are high-ranking military officers who disagree with the president’s policy of political change.

credit here

Education is a basic human right guaranteed under Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Access to education in many parts of the world is challenging, but it is especially difficult in areas where minority women face discrimination because of their gender and their status as a minority.

UN Watch wishes to highlight three specific countries in which discrimination against minority women leads to violations of their right to education.

First, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the government discriminates against Baha’i women. While Muslim women in Iran have access to education, Baha’i women are often banned from attending university. For example, after serving as a teacher for 15 years, Mahvash Sabet, a Baha’i woman, was dismissed from her job after the Islamic Revolution. Her gender and her religion prevented her from working in the public education system.

The targeting of Baha’i educators continues today. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with human rights, have both expressed serious concern at Iran’s restrictions against religious minorities and the government’s limitation of access to higher education for Baha’i women.

A second example is Pakistan, where Hindu girls face the most severe obstacles to education because of their religion and their gender. According to a recent study by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, there are disturbing expressions of anti-Hinduism in Pakistan’s schools. This contravenes Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that “education shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial, or religious groups.”

Public schools close on Muslim and Christian holidays, but remain open on Hindu religious holidays, forcing students to choose between attending religious ceremonies or school. Female teachers are threatened by Islamist militants, and less than 25% of Pakistan’s schools are open to females. In some regions, girls’ education is prohibited for “religious reasons.”

Finally, there is the situation in Myanmar (Burma), where the government persecutes the Muslim minority group of Rohingyas, denying them citizenship. In particular, Rohingya women are suffering at the hands of the government. Freedom House has reported mass military rapes of Rohingya women.

Fearing for their lives, many of these women have been fleeing the country. For example, a young Rohingya woman named Haziqah was forced to leave her home in Myanmar when soldiers attacked her village. She has since been living in a refugee camp with limited means for survival, and no access to education.

In his 2011 report for the Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar expressed serious concern for the Rohingya population, referring to the “endemic discrimination against the Muslim minority.”

Minorities throughout the world face persecution under the rule of oppressive governments. Minority women are especially endangered because of societal perceptions about the alleged inferiority of females. It is the right of every human being to have access to education.

As a female university student, I am grateful for my own education and I recognize its unique value. Education is essential for development, stability, and peace. We urge the members of this body to address discrimination against minority women, and to take action to ensure that every human being enjoys basic access to education.

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