FTUB Daily News for Nov-14-2011, English News - Morning

News Headlines with Brief (1) Clinton Calls for Release of Political Prisoners in Burma | Source: Irrawaddy 12-Nov-2011 Burma is making real progress toward reforms but much more needs to be done, including the release of political prisoners, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday. A recent visit by senior U.S. diplomats found “real changes taking place on the ground,” Clinton said on the sidelines of an annual Pacific Rim summit. Read More..... (2) The Gorkhalis of Myitkyina | Source: Irrawaddy 12-Nov-2011 My flight to Rangoon on June 18 is canceled. Thai Airways announces that heavy rain has closed Yangon airport. In the restless gloom of the waiting area, rumors start to spread. The Burmese army has taken over the airport, people whisper. Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday is a day away. Has some event occurred while they have been away? Young fathers sit staring into space, wondering whether they can ever return home. Read More..... (3) A Tradition Revived, and a Cartoonist Remembered | Source: Irrawaddy 12-Nov-2011 If Ba Gyan, the father of Burmese cartoonists, were still alive today, he would no doubt delight in drawing some of the figures who dominate the country's current political landscape. But even more than this, he would take real pleasure in witnessing the revival of a tradition he started long before Burma achieved independence, and which continued long after his death in 1953. Read More..... (4) Myanmar to free more political prisoners: officials | Source: AFP 13-Nov-2011 "Some prisoners will be released on Monday," an official who did not wish to be named told AFP, while another added that "some prisoners of conscience from prisons outside Yangon" would be among those freed. The move comes after a mass amnesty by the regime last month disappointed observers and the opposition by failing to release most key dissidents. Read More..... (5) Suu Kyi may stand in Burma poll | Source: Bangkok Post 12-Nov-2011 Burma's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is likely to contest an upcoming by-election, a party spokesman said Saturday, paving the way for a political comeback after years of exclusion by army generals. Her National League for Democracy (NLD), delisted last year for boycotting the first elections for 20 years, will consider on Friday whether to re-register as a political party, after Burma's president recently approved changes to the registration laws. "The NLD is likely to register and also Daw Suu is likely to participate at the coming by-election," Nyan Win, a party spokesman told AFP. Daw is a term of respect. Read More..... Clinton Calls for Release of Political Prisoners in Burma http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22441 12-Nov-2011 Burma is making real progress toward reforms but much more needs to be done, including the release of political prisoners, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday. A recent visit by senior U.S. diplomats found “real changes taking place on the ground,” Clinton said on the sidelines of an annual Pacific Rim summit. “It appears there are real changes taking place on the ground and we support these early efforts at reform,” she told reporters. “We want to see the people of Burma able to participate fully in the political life of their own country.” Clinton said the US would continue to call for release of all political prisoners, an end to conflict in minority areas and greater transparency regarding Burma’s relations with North Korea. At stake are political and economic sanctions the US and other Western countries imposed against the junta that had ruled Burma until handing over power to the current elected military-backed government in March this year. Those sanctions were imposed for the failure of Burma’s rulers to hand over power and its poor human rights record. But the administration of US President Barack Obama has sought to engage the government, shifting away from the previous policy of shunning it. The US could gradually ease its sanctions against Burma and allow aid from multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank, over which it has exercised a veto. Among the changes Washington wants to see in Burma is the inclusion of the National League for Democracy, led by democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, into the political system. Suu Kyi’s party overwhelmingly won a 1990 general election, but the army refused to hand over power, instead repressing Suu Kyi and other activists. The junta that previously ruled Burma enacted a constitution and other laws with provisions aimed at limiting Suu Kyi’s political activities, fearing her influence. The US special envoy to Burma, Derek Mitchell, told reporters in Rangoon on Oct.18 that the government has taken positive steps and that the US is thinking of how to actively support those reforms. The Gorkhalis of Myitkyina http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22442 12-Nov-2011 My flight to Rangoon on June 18 is canceled. Thai Airways announces that heavy rain has closed Yangon airport. In the restless gloom of the waiting area, rumors start to spread. The Burmese army has taken over the airport, people whisper. Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday is a day away. Has some event occurred while they have been away? Young fathers sit staring into space, wondering whether they can ever return home. We get bussed to the Amaranth Hotel, a fancy five-star hotel in the outskirts of Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. Using my wireless thumb drive, I e-mail my friend in Washington, DC, and request her to check Twitter. Within a few minutes, I get my answer: a plane has skidded off the tracks at Yangon Airport. Flights supposed to land there are being rerouted to Singapore. We fly to Rangoon the next morning. In the excited conversations I start up with my fellow travelers, I refer repeatedly to my visit to “Burma,” to which they politely remind me it is now “Myanmar.” At a crowded traffic junction, a young newspaper boy flashes me illicit news printed in The Nation, a Thai newspaper. The front flap is folded over to hide the headlines inside: “Kachin Rebels Resume Fighting at Border, Threats of Civil War.” only 3,000 kyats (US $4.70), he says. I get a Hollywood thrill seeing the news, hidden so discreetly and flashed briefly before my eyes. In a nearby restaurant, the kindly owner starts to discuss the Kachin rebels with me. The people are protesting, she says, because the benefits of the new hydroelectricity dam currently being built willall go to China. The Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River will dry up and the Kachin will get nothing in return. She is surprised I do not know all this already. “I think you are journalist and you come to report about this,” she confides. I deny this, but she hardly believes me: how could I not be a journalist? Obviously I was not a tourist—clearly I had come for some specific purpose. Four months earlier, in February, I had ridden a pickup truck to Lashio, in the northern Shan state. A government official had looked at me and asked, “Are you a writer?” Do I have “I am a writer” written on my forehead, I had wondered at the time. In hindsight, this was disingenuous: which tourist in her right mind would be riding a pickup truck to Lashio, sitting squashed alongside 30 laborers in the back with a giant pile of goods, and only a plastic mat as cushioning? I had admitted I was a writer, of sorts, but I need not have worried—the official went on to tell me that Myanmar was now introducing democratic norms and would soon become like other democracies. He also told me that he never took the state-owned Myanma Airlines, and thathe felt that his country would slowly but surely adopt the political freedom of other countries. He admired writers, and wanted to learn to write in English. Of course, he was a government official whose children studied at the best schools. His three rosy-cheeked children went to one of the best boarding schools in the country, in Pyin U Lwin (formerly Maymyo), where he was picking them up to take them for a short vacation. Ordinary people had told me that only government officials get to send their children to good schools, or to buy property or start businesses. We can’t do anything, they said. It might have been true in this case but the official was so pleasant, polite and charming, and so clearly on the side of a democratic system, that it was hard to fault him. Despite all this, I was unsure how much I should reveal—would saying that I was writing a book about the Nepali/ Gorkhali community in Myanmar bring unwelcome attention? Did I want to invite the possibility of more government officials asking me more questions? I was unsure, and in the confusing absence of information it seemed better not to say anything. Back in the Rangoon restaurant on a steaming and oppressive June evening, I shook my head and said: “No, I’m not here to report on the Kachin rebellion.” The owner was surprised by this. Then she resumed telling me the story of what was happening in Myitkyina, almost as if it did not matter why I had come in the first place, as long as I got a chance to witness what was going on there. I was educated, it was clear. I could speak and write in English. And this was enough credentials to be a witness. Reading the New Light of Myanmar, the government-run newspaper, I saw that indeed the Kachin rebels have resumed fighting in Myitkyina, where I was headed. As the restaurant owner had earlier indicated, the news also told me that the Kachin were protesting the building of a dam by China; they had already blown up 22 bridges. A Tradition Revived, and a Cartoonist Remembered http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22443 12-Nov-2011 If Ba Gyan, the father of Burmese cartoonists, were still alive today, he would no doubt delight in drawing some of the figures who dominate the country's current political landscape. But even more than this, he would take real pleasure in witnessing the revival of a tradition he started long before Burma achieved independence, and which continued long after his death in 1953. That tradition is the annual cartoon exhibition held at his home on Lower 13th Street in Rangoon, now named U Ba Gyan Street in his honor. For years, the exhibition was one of the local highlights of the Tazaungdaing festival of lights, which falls on the first full moon after the end of the Buddhist Lent. But in the late 1990s, the exhibition fell foul of Burma's censors and quietly faded away. Now, however, it has returned, in the latest sign of a modest cultural reawakening stirred by the Burmese government's recent relaxation of restrictions on artists and journalists. It was nearly a century ago that Ba Gyan started developing his talents at the Burma Art Club (BAC) in Rangoon. Founded by a high-ranking British railway official named Martin Jones in 1918, the BAC offered drawing and painting lessons to young Burmese artists, and a place where they could meet and exchange ideas. It was here that Ba Gyan met Ba Gale (another pioneering cartoonist), Hein Sunn, Saya Mya, Ba Zaw and Ohn Lwin, who all became famous national artists. Ba Gyan got his first break when one of his cartoons appeared in the Rangoon Gazette. He quit his government job and soon established himself as a household name. In addition to editorial cartoons that he used to spread a message of peace and reconciliation, he illustrated many children's books and directed Burma’s first animated film. One of his fans was Burma's then Prime Minister U Nu, who thought that Ba Gyan's popular cartoons could be used not only to promote peace, but also to portray the dark side of the enemy—the communist insurgents who were waging war against his government. But Ba Gyan, who led a simple life and showed little interest in government offers of opportunities to study overseas and other perks, always said that the was too busy to meet U Nu. This is not to say, however, that Ba Gyan spared the communists in his cartoons. Both the government and the insurgents were regular targets of his sometimes biting sarcasm. But Ba Gyan also had his critics. The late Ludu Daw Amar, one of Burma's most famous leftist writers, described Ba Gyan's politics as simplistic. The cartoonist was, she said, better at ridiculing those opposed to his vision of peace and unity than he was at doing anything to achieve these goals. Such criticism did nothing, however, to blunt the Burmese public's love for Ba Gyan's creations. One of his characters, Hpyauk Seik, earned a special place in people's hearts. After Ba Gyan's wife died, Hpyauk Seik became hermit dressed in the garb of a holy mendicant, reflecting his sorrow. After independence, Ba Gyan was given Burma's highest honor for a national artist, the Ahlinga Kyawswa. But an even more fitting testimony to his greatness may be that nearly 60 years after his death, his spirit lives on through generations of fellow cartoonists who remain as inspired as ever by his vision and his wit. Myanmar to free more political prisoners: officials http://news.yahoo.com/myanmar-free-more-prisoners-officials-060811571.html 13-Nov-2011 Some prisoners will be released on Monday," an official who did not wish to be named told AFP, while another added that "some prisoners of conscience from prisons outside Yangon" would be among those freed. The move comes after a mass amnesty by the regime last month disappointed observers and the opposition by failing to release most key dissidents. It also comes just a few days before the country's new nominally civilian administration is due to attend a summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on the Indonesian island of Bali. Myanmar, which has shown signs of tentative reform in recent months and appears keen to break out of its international isolation, is seeking to take the ASEAN chair in 2014. Since assuming power in March, President Thein Sein, a former general, has surprised critics by holding direct talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and by defying ally China by freezing work on an unpopular mega-dam. The release of all of the country's political prisoners, who include pro-democracy campaigners, journalists and lawyers, however, remains a top demand of Western nations which imposed sanctions on Myanmar. The new regime, which replaced a long-ruling military junta after a controversial election, pardoned more than 6,300 prisoners -- including about 200 political detainees -- in a much-anticipated amnesty in October. Among those released were members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party and celebrated comedian and vocal government critic Zarganar, who goes by one name only. But many leading dissidents, including key figures involved in a failed 1988 student-led uprising, were kept behind bars. The exact number of political prisoners currently locked up in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is unclear. Before last month's amnesty, rights groups and observers believed the country had roughly 2,000 political detainees but NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the real number was lower. "About 500 political prisoners are still in prison. About 200 of them are NLD members," he told AFP. A government-appointed human rights panel, meanwhile, said in an open letter in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Sunday there were around 300 political detainees left in the country. In the letter, the national human rights commission, which was created in September, called for a new amnesty that would include political prisoners "who do not pose a threat to the stability of State and public tranquility". The previous amnesty was also preceded by an open letter from the commission. Monday's prisoner release will coincide with a press conference by popular democracy icon Suu Kyi to mark the first anniversary of her release after years of house arrest, just days after the country's widely condemned 2010 elections. Her NLD party was delisted last year for boycotting the first polls for 20 years, but its members will discuss this Friday whether to re-register following changes to registration laws. Amid a thaw in relations with the government, the NLD is widely expected to return to the political arena, paving the way for Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi to contest an upcoming, as yet unscheduled, by-election. While the United Nations, the United States and the European Union have acknowledged the army-backed government's recent conciliatory gestures, they continue to press for major reforms. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday said Myanmar needed to do "much more" to improve human rights despite her belief that "real changes" were under way. Speaking to reporters at an Asia-Pacific gathering in Hawaii, she also repeated a call for the unconditional release of all political prisoners. Suu Kyi may stand in Burma poll http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/265948/suu-kyi-likely-to-stand-in-burma-by-election 12-Nov-2011 Burma's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is likely to contest an upcoming by-election, a party spokesman said Saturday, paving the way for a political comeback after years of exclusion by army generals. Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi (pictured in September) is likely to contest a by-election in the coming months, following a change to party registration laws. The National League for Democracy, delisted last year for boycotting a rare election, will on Friday consider whether to re-register as a political party, paving the way for Suu Kyi to return to the official political arena. Her National League for Democracy (NLD), delisted last year for boycotting the first elections for 20 years, will consider on Friday whether to re-register as a political party, after Burma's president recently approved changes to the registration laws. "The NLD is likely to register and also Daw Suu is likely to participate at the coming by-election," Nyan Win, a party spokesman told AFP. Daw is a term of respect. It is not yet clear when a by-election will be held, but there are more than 40 seats available in parliament's two chambers. Suu Kyi swept the NLD to election victory in 1990 but the party was barred from taking office, and it shunned last year's vote largely because of rules that would have forced it to expel imprisoned members. Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the time. Locked up for 15 of the past 22 years, the 66-year-old Nobel peace prize winner was released from her latest stint in detention a few days after last November's poll, which was widely condemned as a farce by the West. The new army-backed government has, however, surprised critics with a string of reformist steps, such as defying ally China by freezing work on an unpopular mega-dam in the north, and holding direct talks with Suu Kyi. The daughter of Burma's independence hero Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947, Suu Kyi took on a leading role in the pro-democracy movement in 1988, the year that protests erupted against the military and were brutally crushed. Widely known as "The Lady" in Burma, she became a beacon of hope for many in her country in the face of repression, but was widely feared by the military rulers. While Burma's nominally civilian government is still filled with former generals, the government said in September it was ready to work with Suu Kyi and her party if they officially re-entered politics. A decision to re-register is widely expected, with 100 senior NLD members gathering in Rangoon on Friday to discuss the move. Nyan Win did not comment on which constituency Suu Kyi would stand in, or what kind of position she expected, but party sources said she would contest in a Rangoon township. His comments came a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Burma needed to do "much more" to improve human rights, despite her belief that "real changes" were under way. "We continue to call for the unconditional release of all political prisoners and an end to the violence in ethnic minority areas," she told reporters at an Asia-Pacific summit in Hawaii. Burma's law on political parties amended this month, and endorsed by President Thein Sein, removes the condition that all parties must agree to "preserve" the country's 2008 constitution, according to state media. The wording has now been changed to "respect and obey", it said -- a small alteration but one that would allow the NLD to criticise and suggest changes to the constitution. Burma expert Aung Naing Oo of the Vahu Development Institute, a Thai-based think-tank, said the NLD's return to the political process would offer the country "a better relationship with the international community". "It is really, really important for Burma. It will be seen as a normal country for the first time in 23 to 24 years," he told AFP, using Burma's former name. Suu Kyi, who was feted by thousands of supporters in August on her first political trip outside Rangoon since she was freed, is expected to hold a press conference on Monday to mark the first anniversary of her release.