BBC News – Muslim homes razed in Burma’s Rakhine state – report

Tuesday, 14 August 2012. The largest Muslim area in the Burmese city of Sittwe was razed to the ground in recent communal violence, a UK broadcaster has reported.

A team from the UK’s Channel 4 News gained access to Sittwe, which has been off limits to reporters for months.

They filmed an area once home to 10,000 that had been reduced to rubble.

Days of violence in Rakhine state began in late May when a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered by three Muslims. A mob later killed 10 Muslims.

Sectarian clashes spread across the state, with houses of both Buddhists and Muslims being burnt down.

Most Rohingya Muslims have been moved out of Sittwe into temporary camps.

The Burmese government declared a state of emergency following the outbreak of violence and has since prevented foreign media from visiting the region.

However, the Channel 4 News team filmed the area of Sittwe known as Narzi, which it reported was once home to an estimated 10,000.

Local Rakhine Buddhists were picking through the debris of the houses, which had once been the Rohingya area of the city.

One man told reporters that the Muslims had set fire to their own homes in an attempt to burn down the whole community.

The UNHCR has said that about 80,000 people have been displaced in and around the Sittwe and Maungdaw by the violence.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has said that forces sent to quash the unrest were reported to be targeting Muslims.

She has called for an independent investigation.

There is long-standing tension between Rakhine people, who are Buddhist and make up the majority of the state’s population, and Muslims.

Most of these Muslims identify themselves as Rohingya, a group that originated in part of Bengal, now called Bangladesh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19263926

BBC News – Burma: UN calls for inquiry over Rakhine violence

Saturday, 28 July 2012. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has called for an independent investigation following claims of abuses by security forces in Burma’s Rakhine state.

Ms Pillay said forces sent to quash violence in the northern state were reported to be targeting Muslims.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says about 80,000 people have been displaced following inter-communal violence.

The agency says most of those displaced are living in camps and more tents are being airlifted in to help them.

The latest violence in Rakhine state began in May when a Buddhist ethnic Rakhine woman was raped and murdered by three uslims.

On 3 June, an unidentified mob killed 10 Muslims.

Ms Pillay’s office says that since then at least 78 people have been killed in ensuing violence but unofficial estimates are higher.

“We have been receiving a stream of reports from independent sources alleging discriminatory and arbitrary responses by security forces, and even their instigation of and involvement in clashes,” Ms Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said.

“Reports indicate that the initial swift response of the authorities to the communal violence may have turned into a crackdown targeting Muslims, in particular members of the Rohingya community.”

She welcomed a government decision to allow a UN envoy access to Rakhine state next week, but said it was “no substitute for a fully-fledged independent investigation”.

‘Scared to return’

The UNHCR says that about 80,000 people had been displaced in and around the towns of Sittwe and Maungdaw.

Spokesman Andrej Mahecic said that many were too scared to return home while others were being prevented from earning a living.

“Some displaced Muslims tell UNHCR staff they would also like to go home to resume work, but fear for their safety,” he said.

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi recently called for laws to protect the rights of ethnic minority groups.

In her first statement in parliament, she said such laws were important for Burma to become a truly democratic nation of mutual respect.

Burma has undergone a series of political reforms initiated by the military-backed government.

But some parts of the country are still hit by conflict and unrest, most recently Rakhine state.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19025549

BBC News – Old tensions bubble in Burma

Fergal Keane BBC News

Monday 11 June 2012. For decades the fear and hatred has simmered, but rigid military control has largely kept it in check.

Now, as Burma enters a new era of liberalisation, decades of pent-up feelings have exploded into sectarian violence.

Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine state have attacked each other, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency and impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew in several areas.

President Thein Sein has warned of an unravelling of the country’s democratic transition in the face of inter-communal violence.

“If this endless anarchic vengeance and deadly acts continue, there is the danger of them spreading to other parts and being overwhelmed by subversive influences,” he said on Sunday.

“If that happens, it can severely affect peace and tranquillity and our nascent democratic reforms and the development of the country.”

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Muslim leaders in Rangoon earlier this week and issued a similar appeal for tolerance.

History of hatred

Local Buddhists blame the Muslim Rohingya people for the outbreak of violence, which appears to have started when a woman was raped and killed. Three Muslim men are in custody following the attack.

In what seems to have been a revenge attack, 10 Muslims were killed in an attack on a bus.

But whatever the cause of the latest clashes, the conflict between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine state has deep roots.

During the Second World War and again in the early 1990s, sectarian violence claimed many lives.

One of the most worrying trends is the appearance on placards and on the internet of demands for Rohingyas to be removed from Burma. Under the country’s constitution they are denied citizenship.

There are an estimated 750,000 Rohingyas in Rakhine state, but they are frequently referred to as “Bengalis” who belong in neighbouring Bangladesh.

As a former Burmese foreign minister reportedly once remarked: “Historically, there has never been a Rohingya race in Myanmar [Burma].”

But the Rohingya are also stateless in Bangladesh, where many thousands have sought refuge from persecution in Burma.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch said discriminatory government policy in Burma had helped inflame tensions.

The organisation said the government’s handling of the latest crisis would be a critical test of its reform program.

Elsewhere there has been progress in negotiating an end to some of the other ethnic problems that have plagued Burma since independence, although the situation in Kachin state remains hugely problematic.

Newfound freedoms

So how great a threat to the transition is the violence in Rakhine state?

If the violence was happening in isolation then the threat could be regarded as relatively small.

But for a country emerging from nearly 50 years of military domination, with different groups testing the limits of freedom, the current position is potentially precarious.

In recent months there has been a series of labour disputes and protests over power shortages that would have been unthinkable under the old dispensation.

The demonstrations certainly reflect a more tolerant state, but also a flexing of muscle on the part of a previously quiescent people who are frustrated with poverty and lack of development.

Set against all this is the emergence of the National League for Democracy (NLD) as a potent electoral force.

It won 43 out of the 44 seats it contested in recent by-elections, a result that surprised the military backed government.

There have been signs in recent weeks that the celebrity profile of its leader Aung San Suu Kyi – and her warning against “reckless optimism” about Burma’s future – has unsettled some within the leadership.

President Thein Sein cancelled his appearance at an economic forum in Bangkok apparently in response to the high profile accorded to the opposition leader. Her forthcoming tour of Europe will likely heighten official anxiety that Aung San Suu Kyi is already being treated as Burma’s national leader by Western governments.

The relationship between the president and Aung San Suu Kyi is fundamental to the success of the transition.

For now, Thein Sein has managed to keep the more conservative parts of the military on board, just as Aung San Suu Kyi has persuaded her more radical supporters to accept compromise with the state.

There is a fear that more conservative elements of the government might see rising ethnic unrest, expanding protests over living conditions, and the growing political threat from the NLD as a reason to put the brake on reform.

As the regime’s grip loosens and long dormant forces emerge the transition is likely to be challenged in numerous and unpredictable way.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18402678

BBC News – Suu Kyi warns against ‘reckless optimism’ on Burma reforms

Friday 1 June 2012. Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has warned against ”reckless optimism” over reforms in the country.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Bangkok, she said the process was not yet irreversible.

The parliament of which she recently became a member was still far from democratic, she added.

She also called on investors to meet the country’s needs, saying that job creation and training was vital for Burma’s young population.

She added that when investment comes into the country, then it should not fuel corruption or inequality.

”I am here not to tell you what to do but to tell you what we need,” she said in her first major speech outside Burma for more than 20 years.

She urged investors who are planning to put money into Burma to do so with an awareness of the need for improvement in the lives of ordinary Burmese people.

”Please think deeply for us,” she said.

Burma’s military-backed civilian government has started a series of reforms to open up the country.

Practical plans

Ms Suu Kyi said Burma didn’t want investment to mean further corruption and greater inequality.

”We want it to mean jobs,” she added.

She said that skills training would be a key factor in enabling Burma’s workers to fill any of the new jobs that are created.

”There is a great need for basic skills,” she said. ”We need vocational training much more than higher education.”

While she said that she valued the latter, she added that the international community should consider the country’s needs ”in a very practical way”.

Burma is committed to reforms, she said, and would like to be ”linked to a regional and global commitment to share growth”.

”We want to be part of that more prosperous, peaceful world,” she said.

More prominence

Since arriving in the Thai capital on Tuesday, she has met Burmese migrants in the Samut Sakhon province – who gave her a rousing welcome – as well as dignitaries including Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

For the past two decades, Aung San Suu Kyi has either been under house arrest or was afraid that if she left Burma she would not be allowed to go back.

But recent reforms led to her election to parliament last month and she is playing an increasingly prominent role both inside and outside Burma.

The pro-democracy leader was given a passport in early May.

After her trip to Thailand she plans to return to Burma before travelling to Europe later this month.

She intends to go to Norway to formally accept the Nobel Peace Prize that she won in 1991, and will also visit the UK where she has family. She has also accepted an invitation to address the British parliament on 21 June.

It has also been reported that she will go to Geneva, Paris and Ireland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18291862

The Hindu – Myanmar’s capital is not a teeming metropolis

Nirupama Subramanian

Naypyitaw, 29 May 2012. One million people are said to live in Myanmar’s capital city, but you would never guess from its vast emptiness that its population is almost the same as that of Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu.

Almost all Ministries have completed the shift to this new city that the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s Army, quietly began constructing in 2002, and inaugurated four years later as the new capital.

Since then, Naypyitaw, which means royal city, has got itself a couple of plazas that sell cheap imports and have theatres screening Chinese, Thai, and Hollywood movies.

But save for these and a couple of market squares with shops and stalls that hawk vegetables and groceries, cloth, medicines and hardware – one boasts a spa and a spectacles shop called American Vision – there is little sign of urban civic life in this strikingly un-peopled city.

Currently, even the government apartments – with different coloured roofs for single and family housing, apartments for the military and senior officials – have none of the usual markers of residential neighbourhoods, such as clothes hung out to dry, kids playing or parked vehicles.

The trees, recently planted, are yet to attain their full height, and the sparse vegetation gives no sign that several decades ago, this was a thick teak forest.

It was to this city that Air India One jetted in on Sunday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his entourage, as he began his visit to Myanmar. As he was driven to the hotel, flag-waving children had strung themselves out near the approach to welcome him. The capital has only one high school.

On Monday morning, Dr. Singh was driven for his meeting with President Thein Sein in a motorcade on a sweeping 20-lane road that can double up as a runway, and has been quite likely designed for that dual-purpose.

Naypyitaw’s concretised roads, with a minimum of eight lanes, and increasing according to the zone — those in the government zone are the widest — are a drag racer’s dream come true: wide, smooth and barely a vehicle in sight. Policemen blocked the roads during the motorcade, but they might as well haven’t taken the trouble — at each block, there were just a couple of motorcyclists or mopeds, and at one, there was no vehicle at all.

The Presidential Palace is apparently the centrepiece of a capital that has no centre beside it. No one knows how much, but the Tatmadaw must have poured billions into its construction and that of the nearby parliament buildings. In the vastness and isolation of the setting, the fantasyland-like architecture seems designed to overwhelm.

The city boasts a dedicated hotel zone that has no less than 11 hotels, and another under-construction hotel zone, but it is still a destination only for official delegations or foreign businessmen who have dealings with the government. Foreign tourists need a permit to visit the city, and until recently, even Myanmarese from different places needed permits to visit the capital.

In any case, there is nothing much yet to see in Naypyitaw. Locals suggest a recently constructed replica of Yangon’s Shwedagon pagoda — the height of the spire one metre less than the original — as a sightseeing possibility.

Five white elephants are being reared by the temple. For the kings of Burma, albino elephants were a symbol of their strength and endurance. If the animals are at all associated with a more recent meaning, no one is talking of that.

The Tatmadaw never gave a reason for shifting the capital from Yangon, 320 km to the south, a city of six million people that is culturally, economically and politically alive, despite the years of international isolation.

But when it happened, people cited a few possibilities: the Army feared a western military offensive on Yangon; the superstitious brass of the junta made the decision on the basis of astrological advice; and it wanted to move the seat of government to a location where opposition protests would never have the paralysing effect as in the politically-charged urbanscape of Yangon.

While it may still take years for the emptiness to fill up, the shift now seems irreversible. Private property developers are building grand villas in the city and offering them as investments for the future.

Even the Opposition apparently accepts the shift. During her reconciliation talks with the Myanmar government, Aung San Suu Kyi, the chairperson of the National League for Democracy, travelled to Naypyitaw to meet President Thein Sein. She recently came here again from her home in Yangon, to be sworn in as a Member of Parliament, and stayed at the hotel where Prime Minister Singh is a state guest.

For Dr. Singh to stay two nights in this city and touch down for barely a few hours in Yangon on Tuesday to meet the pro-democracy leader is yet another iteration of the message that New Delhi has repeatedly sought to send: it is here to build on its engagement with the rulers of Myanmar, irrespective of who they are, and while welcoming Ms. Suu Kyi’s participation in the country’s political process, India isn’t here to dictate the pace of political reforms.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3466702.ece?homepage=true

The Tribune – Manmohan meets President Thein Sein; Trade to double with Myanmar, Delhi ropes in private sector

By Raj Chengappa in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar

For long, the major grouse of Myanmar’s ruling junta was that while India stood tall in talk, it was small on delivery of its promises. In diplomatic circles, India was often referred to with the derisive acronym NATO – No Action Talk Only.

On Monday, the second day of his historic visit to Myanmar, the first by an Indian Prime Minister in a quarter of a century, Manmohan Singh was determined to shake the image of India being a sleeping elephant. As he sat down for a summit meeting with President Thein Sein in the sprawling 100-room Presidential Palace, the two sides signed an exhaustive list of deliverables that spanned trade and investment, connectivity, development and security.

That list included a decision to double bilateral trade that currently totals $ 1.3 billion by 2015 or in the next three years.

India made a major effort to involve its private sector to give “greater depth and spread,” as External Affairs Minister S M Krishna put it, to trade and investment tie-ups between the two countries.

That saw a 25-member delegation of business honchos descend on the capital to have a meeting with President Thein Sein and his key cabinet ministers. With Myanmar sitting on huge oil and gas reserves, many Indian companies have shown interest in investing in available blocks for exploration. At the bilateral meeting, a production sharing contract was signed between the Myanmar government and Jubilant Energy, a privately owned Indian oil exploration company, for an onshore block.

The bilateral meeting went far beyond the scheduled time, with Manmohan Singh reiterating “India’s readiness to extend all necessary assistance in accelerating the country’s democratic transition. ”Though the longyi-clad Thein Sein understands and speaks English, he chose to communicate through Burmese, the official language, so that his entire cabinet which was present could understand the dialogue. Given that the Myanmar President operates through a collective leadership dominated by retired and current military top brass, Thein Sein was also ensuring that China-backers in his cabinet were on board.

Both India and Myanmar are acutely conscious of China’s overarching influence in the region and are keen to diminish it by strengthening ties with each other for differing reasons. While Myanmar needs India to increase its bargaining power with China and lessen its dependence to it, India is keen to strengthen ties with Myanmar because in many ways it sees the country as the gateway to its ‘Look East’ ambition of a significant engagement with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Even then India would be hard put to match China’s investments which pumped in $ 4 billion last November for a single power project. Summing up the outcome of the bilateral visit, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai told The Tribune, “We didn’t go for a big-bang approach, but took a whole series of small but significant steps to ensure that our relationship with Myanmar had substance and left them with no doubt that we regarded them as a key neighbour.”

Among the other decisions taken by the two leaders was to significantly enhance connectivity between the two countries to promote both trade and tourism. They decided to speed up the trilateral connectivity with Thailand by putting on fast-track the construction of the highway linking Moreh in Manipur with Mae Sot in Thailand via Myanmar.

To ensure that there would be seamless trilateral connectivity by 2016, Manmohan Singh announced that India would repair and upgrade 71 bridges on the Tamu-Kalewa friendship road apart from upgrading the Kalewa-Yargi road segment. On its part, Myanmar would upgrade the Yargyi-Monywa stretch to Thailand. The two leaders also agreed to launch a trans-border bus service from Imphal in India to Mandalay, Myanmar’s business hub.

As significant was the signing of a new Air Service Agreement between the two countries that provides for expansion of air connectivity to cover more carriers, flights and destinations. The agreement provides for what is known as “5th freedom rights” that enables Indian carriers to combine their flights to Myanmar with other destinations in South East Asia and elsewhere – a rare concession. Currently there are no direct flights between India and Myanmar and the new agreement is to give incentives to airliners both public and private to correct the situation.

Even though there is a gauge difference between tracks used by Indian and Myanmar Railways, the two sides decided to set up a Joint Working Group on Cooperation in the Railway Sector to look at sorting such issues out and also the feasibility of movement of freight from India to the South East Asian Region from its North East borders.

Meanwhile, during the bilateral meeting, the progress of the Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport Project was also reviewed. Conceived by India, the Kaladan project set up in 2010 at cost of $ 500 million, is aimed at providing an alternate cargo route to India’s landlocked North-Eastern states via Myanmar. India is funding and constructing a deep-water port at the mouth of the Kaladan River in Sittwe in Southern Myanmar apart from upgrading highways in Myanmar to develop transport infrastructure between the border areas of the two countries.

With India and Myanmar sharing a 1,600 km border such cooperation has become critical. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) provides for the setting up a Border Haat on a pilot basis at Pangsau Pass, Arunachal Pradesh. Many such Boarder Haats are being proposed primarily to enhance trade between the border states of the two countries. An MOU was also signed on India-Myanmar Border Area Development to look at infrastructure development and micro-economic projects including upgradation of roads and construction of schools, health centres and bridges.

With trouble in the border states being a sour point between the two countries – India had always objected to Myanmar’s tacit support to North Eastern rebel groups in the past – the visit saw a renewed effort to ensure that they worked in coordination to thwart militant groups especially Naga rebels. Myanmar too is concerned with militancy by its ethnic minorities that live in areas bordering India.

The joint statement after the bilateral meeting stated that both Manmohan Singh and Thein Sein, “reaffirmed their shared commitment to fight the scourge of terrorism and insurgent activity in all its forms and manifestations.” That included committing that the territories of either country would not be allowed to be used for “activities inimical to the other including for training, sanctuary and other operations by terrorists and insurgent organisations and their operatives.”

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120529/main1.htm