Diary by Andrew Kirkwood and unsung heroes in Burma

Burma diary - the relief effort

Andrew Kirkwood, Burma director of Save the Children, has been keeping a diary of his life in Rangoon in the days following Cyclone Nargis.

It's a good source coming from someone on the ground.

Read his diary here and here.

Burmese people helping each other out

A few days ago, I wrote about DIY, in which I elaborated how we, the Burmese, have learned to struggle through hardships by being creative and innovative. That spirit is seen in the hard work of volunteers in reaching out to the cyclone victims.

From the Irrawaddy:

"Since I don't have the means to provide cash or kind, I contribute labor by helping distribute relief goods," said Nyi Nyi, a 21-year-old university student. "Whenever we distribute rice and clothing, I can see the faces of the cyclone victims light up. It is very rewarding to see them smile."

"They are true humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the International Red Cross representative in Burma, after touring an area where volunteers were giving first aid to the injured.

After enduring decades of poverty and government oppression, Burmese people are known for their resilience, having learned to depend on each other from day to day especially in times of crisis.

The gospel according to the New Light of Myanmar and the truth on the ground

The gospel according to the New Light of Myanmar

Here is an excerpt from the New Light of Myanmar, May 8, 2008 issue.

At the relief camp of Kungyangon BEHS No 2, Lt-Gen Myint Swe and the ministers met with the storm-hit victims and presented foodstuff, purified drinking water and tarpaulin to them.

A cultural note for the Burmese: If you have lived in a free and open society (or fake democratic Singapore) long enough, there is something about the above picture that will make you irk.

Today, canned fish, coffeemix packets, instant noodles, biscuits, blankets, tarpaulin, clothes, soap, purified drinking water and pencils weighing 2.5 tons were distributed to the victims of Twantay and Kungyangon townships. Lt-Gen Myint Swe and Minister Maj-Gen Hla Tun left there by helicopter and arrived back here in the afternoon.

The truth on the ground

The disaster response teams in Burma are ill-equipped, and lack material support. Here is an email from Sakhorn Boongullaya, who is in charge of logistics operations for all UN and NGO in mobilizing food and relief supplies to the survivors.

From: Sakhorn Boongullaya [mailto:Sakhorn.Boongullaya@wfp.org]
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008 6:47 PM
To: Myanmar Nouveau Company Limited
Dear all,
I need all help from our community. I need trucks, waterway transport, warehouse space up to 10,000 tons capacity. I am in charge of logistics operation for all UN and NGO in mobilizing food, and relief supplies to help those affected people from Cyclone Nargis, one and half million people that we are helping now. If you have any contact of the said pls advise them to come and see me at UN building on the Namuak road, Yangon, or call 09-5007688, 09-8601279.
Contact Sakhorn or my staff, Nyunt Win Htay.
We are not asking for free but we will pay. Please please help.
Many thanks and best regards,
Sakhorn
UN WFP Logistics

A kid who needs warm clothes and better shelter [Photo: Khin Maung Win (AFP)]

AFP photos

http://burmachannel.com/nargis/?path=./&page=0

DIY

Photo from LA Times: the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis

LA Times said: MAKING DO: Using basic hand tools, two men in Yangon, like many Myanmar residents, are performing much of the cleanup work themselves for lack of foreign or domestic assistance.

DIY Way of Life

We, the Burmese, are used to solving problems on our own because we all know our government does not care about us. Almost everything in Burma is DIY (Do It Yourself), to borrow a geeky terms.

Electricity

In our town in Southern Burma, the electricity from the government is not reliable at all (We honor Thomas Alva Edison every day by staying in the dark) Guess what the solution of the community is? A well-to-do family would buy a generator and install power line -- only the home-quality one -- to each house in the street, who wants the electricity. The family runs the generator, let's say, from 6:00 PM till 9:00 PM. The family then collects the fees every two weeks, based on the number of fluorescent lamps you have agreed to install in the first place. How democratic and market-oriented our community is! :)

Telecommunication

Burmese migrants in Thailand have been using the family-run telephone exchange in the border area to call their family back home. Here is what you do. You dial a Thailand registered number of the family-owned telephone switch in the border and tell them the number in Burma you are trying to call. The exchange having several phones registered both in Thailand and Burma, can route your call from Thailand's phone system to Burma's. You have just dialed a telephone number in Thailand and yet you are talking to your family in Burma. They collect the fees at the end of the month based on how many minutes you talked (or hours if you talked to your sweethearts :). Well, the Burmese have just installed a home-made telephone switch without any investment from governments or businesses.

Survival of the Fittest

We have learned to survive and live with inefficiencies, thanks to our government. The educated Burmese also acknowledge that this is not good in the long run. But what else can we do, except to live with it? To fight the mighty guns pointing at us is an insurmountable task (at least for me).

Back to Nargis

If the government does not care about the victims, and relief experts cannot get to ground zero in time, we will have to do what it takes to survive. Not a good solution, I agree. But what else can we do? What would you do?

Help as much as you can

This morning, I talked to one of my former students from the seminary (Myanmar Institute of Theology), who lives in Shwe Pyi Thar, a poor suburb north of Rangoon. He is highly educated, graduated from the best seminary in Burma (Myanmar) with a degree in English, and very bright. He said he and his family were fine. But people in his neighborhood in Shwe Pyi Thar were going hungry. He said he was quite depressed, not knowing what to do next. If a bright and educated person like him is depressed, please think of how poor and uneducated families who have nothing to eat and no shelter will have in their minds right now.

The victims cannot wait for MRTV (Myanmar Radio and Television) crews to come in with some government officials handing out nicely packed rice bags or Mama noodle from Thai army.

So please act with your own network as much as you can to mobilize the people in the ground so the relief aids will get to the victims before they die of diseases and hunger or MRTV get there. :)

Weak planning and slow decision making

Weather Forecast from the Burmese official newspaper (Photo taken from Khin Min Zaw's blog)

The above warning on April 29 in the state-owned newspaper said the storm would not be devastating and the wind would be only 40-45 miles per hour.

Mungpi from Mizzima reported:

Though Burma's Meteorology and Hydrology department posted a warning on its official website on April 27, the information was not widely disseminated. The department said that a cyclone was forming in the Bay of Bengal and was heading towards Burma.

State-run media did not issue a cyclone alert until the afternoon of Friday, May 2. The storm first struck the Irrawaddy Delta in late afternoon Friday and swept into Rangoon early Saturday.

Many Rangoon residents said they missed the announcement, broadcast on state-run TV and radio, which usually runs state propaganda.

If Rangoon residents missed the announcement, the worst hit delta residents would not even get wind of it. Here is Mungpi's report again:

"Though my daughters said they knew about the announcement, I was not aware of the cyclone because I am not interested in watching TV, and there was no public announcement in the locality," said a Rangoon resident whose house was smashed by a falling tree.

A leading Thai meteorological expert said the failure to issue a timely warning may have costs thousands of innocent lives.

Dr. Smith Dharmasaroja, chairman of Thailand's National Disaster Warning Centre, said the Burmese government's response was insufficient.

"The government must issue an early warning and send teams to evacuate villagers in the disaster-prone zones as a preparation for the cyclone," Dr. Smith told Mizzima.

Dr. Smith famously predicted that a tsunami would strike Thailand long before the deadly Indian Ocean waves of December 2004, but was widely ignored.

While it is important for the government to issue an announcement, the warnings must be properly disseminated, Dr. Smith said. The authorities must also take precautionary steps, including relocating villagers in the path of the predicted cyclone to higher ground.

The Burmese officials ignored warnings from Indian Meteorology Department and Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) (McCartan, 2008). On a side note, Thai government also ignores Tsunami warning in 2004. (This shows how ASEAN governments do not give planning and decision-making powers to the officials in the field and do not care about the poor and weak).

As of the latest situations, Burmese government is very slow in issuing visas for relief workers (Denby, 2008). They are working at a snail space while people will be left to struggle on their own in the delta areas in Burma.

Holmes [the emergency relief coordinator of the United Nations and under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs] said that during discussions with Burmese officials, the explanation given for the delay in issuing visas was that it was a question that needed to be decided by higher authorities. (Jha, 2008)

I am sure the officials are covering their asses waiting for the decisions from "higher authorities" at the expense of suffering victims who need help right now.

Source:
Denby, K. (2008, May 7). Burma junta drags its feet over visas for aid workers as cyclone victims suffer. The Times Online. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3887278.ece
Jha, L.K. (2008, May 8). UN Frustrated over Visa, Custom Delays The Irrawaddy. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=11837
McCartan, B. (2008, May 7). Myanmar courts political disaster The Asia Times Online. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JE08Ae01.html
Mungpi. (2008, May 6). Burma knew of cyclone nearly a week before it hit. The Mizzima. Retrieved May 7, 2008 from http://www.mizzima.com/nargis-impact/18-nargis-impact/445--burma-knew-of-cyclone-nearly-a-week-before-it-hit

UN Begins Food Distribution in Cyclone-ravaged Burma

The agency [the UN's World Food Program] now has more than 800 metric tons of food stocks in Rangoon, "and will deliver these food resources to all areas in need," it said. The agency also plans to airlift additional supplies into Burma, such as high-energy biscuits, "as soon as possible." (Higgins, 2008)

I think the response is very slow from authorities concerned regarding the dispatch of rescue teams, experts and food supplies to the most affected areas. Nobody seems to know the exact time when the rescue team will be at ground zero. The locals are left to struggle on their own, which is quite a norm in Asian countries. I hope that food and aids will get there to the locals "as soon as possible", to quote the World Food Program Agency.

According to an email from one of the employees from the World Food Program (WFP), the WFP officials have met with the Burmese Deputy Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Recovery. The government officials mentioned that the needs for affected areas were:

• Shelters (iron sheets, nails, plastic sheets)
• Medicine
• Water purifying tablets
• Drinking water
• Hand saws and chain saws

They have set up a distribution channel from the Yangon (Rangoon) International airport to Pathein (Bassein). A liaising team at the airport will accept the donated materials and deliver them by helicopters from Yangon (Rangoon) to Pathein (Bassein). The social welfare department will then deliver the donated materials to the Pathein (Bassein) communities.

I didn't see any mentioning of how to get to the affected villages yet.

Source:
Higgins, A.G. (2008, May 7). UN Begins Food Distribution in Cyclone-ravaged Burma. The Irrawaddy. Retrieved May 7, 2008 from http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=11807

ကံဆိုးမ သွားလေရာ မိုးလိုက်လို့ရွာ

Cyclone Nargis hits Burma

Severe tropical cyclone Nargis lashed Myanmar's main city Saturday, downing power lines and tearing rooves off houses as residents took shelter in their homes as they waited for the storm to pass.

Electricity supplies in Yangon have been cut since late Friday night as the storm bore down from the Bay of Bengal, packing winds of 190-240 kilometres (120-150 miles) per hour, residents said.

Meteorologists have warned of a tidal surge up to 3.5 metres (12 feet) due to the cyclone.

State-run radio was off the air Saturday and Internet connections were down, with even government sites unavailable.

The storm ripped the rooves off several houses in the city. There were no immediate reports of casualties but a Red Cross official said they had lost contact with Ayeyawaddy district since Friday.

Read more at AFP.

Thein Sein and Samak

Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein, left, and his Thai counterpart Samak Sundaravej. (Photo: AP)

There is something about this picture that made me want to print it here even though I don't have the permission to do so -- my apology to the AP photographer. Please look at the picture again and draw your own conclusion.

Thai PM jokes that neighbor Myanmar's draft constitution offers a '50 percent democracy'

Thailand's prime minister joked Wednesday that neighboring Myanmar is striving to become a "50 percent democracy" because the ruling junta's draft constitution would keep detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from elected office.

"Myanmar's prime minister said they are holding the referendum on the constitution because they want the world community to know that Myanmar is a democracy lover," Samak said on behalf of Thein Sein, who declined to speak to reporters.

It's beyond me why Thein Sein wouldn't speak to the reporters. He basically let the world know that the prime minister of Burma is a useless puppet, who couldn't speak for himself. Thai prime minister had to speak for him. What a shame!

Source:
Thai PM jokes that neighbor Myanmar's draft constitution offers a '50 percent democracy' (2008, April 30). The International Herald Tribune. Retrieved May 1, 2008 from http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/30/asia/AS-GEN-Thailand-Myanmar.php

A voter's experience in the Burma's constitution referendum

A funny account of a voter's experience in the police state of Singapore. [a first-hand account in Burmese]

Testing Burmese typing

I tried to type out the following text using Padauk Unicode font. It was from http://www.planet.com.mm forum. I thought it was a nice irony about Bagan for banning gtalk/gmail.

ဆိုဒ်တစ်ခု ကြိုက်လို့ငါ၀င်
ရတ်ဂျစ်စတာ လုပ်ဖို့ငါပြင် တော့
ပေးစရာ မေးလ်မရှိ
ဒီဒုက္ခ  တော့ ပြေးစရာ နတ္ထိ ပါတကား။ 

စော်မကြည် ကျုပ်ဘ၀ 
ဆိုင်ဘာဂဲများနဲ့ 
စကောပြား စကားများပြောရအောင် 
အော် ဆရာသမား 
ဘန်းတာ တွေ ဖွင့်ပေးပါ ခင်ညား။ 

အနေဝေးကာနေ
သူဇာပျို နိုင်ငံခြားမှာ တခြားသူလုမှာစိုးလို့
စကားများ ပြောရအောင်
အော် ဆရာသမား 
ဘန်းတာ တွေ ဖွင့်ပေးပါ ခင်ညား။ 

သားတစ်ကောင် နိုင်ငံခြားက
တစ်ပတ်ခြားတစ်ခါ ဂျီတော့မှာတွေ့ ရာက
အခုတော့ ငါ့မှာလွမ်းရ
အမယ်မင်း ငါ့သားတို့ရယ်
အမေ့ကိုစာနာကြပါလား။

အများနာတကာနာကြားဖို့
တရားစာအုပ်များလဲတောင်းရအောင်
ဟဲ့ ဒကာ ဒကာမများ
ဂျီမေးလ်တော့ဖွင့်ကြပါလား။ 

အင်တာနက်သုံးနိုင်သော်ငြား
ကောင်းတာမှန်ရင် ပိတ်ကာထားမှတော့
အို............ ဂေါတမဘုရား
တပည့်တော်ခင်မျာ လူဖြစ် ရှူံးလူလုံးမလှ
ခွေးလုံးလုံးဖြစ်နေရပါပြီလား။

Unicode Notes

Zawgyi, although widely used by many Burmese web sites, is sadly not compliant with the Unicode standard. Let's hope they will support Unicode 5.1 in their future version. This page from zawgyi.org describes which fonts are compatible with Unicode 5.1 standard.

The Burmese text above can be viewed by any of the standard-compliant Unicode fonts: PadaukOT, Parabaik, ParabaikSans, and Myanmar3. I have the download link for PadaukOT and Parabaik in the following list.

Here is the list of tools/software, which I used.

• Keyman 6.0.15 from Tavultesoft: Keyman Desktop is a keyboard mapping solution, designed with the user in mind.
• myWinE keyboard [Right click and "Save link as"] from thanlwinsoft.org and the layout: MyWinE is an extended keyboard implementing Myanmar and Sgaw Karen support in Unicode.
• PadaukOT and Parabaik fonts: download

People as tourist magnets By Christiane Oelrich

The residents of the village of long-necked women in northern Thailand say they feel like prisoners in a human zoo. The government says that is absurd.

Kayan Tayar, Mae Hong Son (dpa) - When Mu La talks, her voice sounds muffled because of the 27 heavy brass rings that the 44-year-old wears around her neck.

But the message from the refugee from Burma - who lives in northern Mae Hong Son province in a mock village purpose-built for tourists - is crystal-clear: "We want to leave here, never mind where to, only away from here. We feel like prisoners."

Visitors call the village a "human zoo," but Thailand's government rejects the term as "absurd."

Mu La is a member of an ethnic group whose women wear brass rings around their necks as status symbols. For them, the longer the neck, the more beautiful the woman.

Their rings can weigh 10 kilogrammes or more, and over the years, the weight pushes down the collar bones and shoulders, making necks appear longer and giving the women their nicknames of "long-necked" or "giraffe" women.

They are part of an ethnic group called the Padung in Thailand, but they reject that term as denigrating and call themselves Kayan and their village Kayan Tayar.

An Italian tourist couple has paid an entrance fee of 250 baht ($8) each to visit Kayan Tayar, which lies at the end of an unpaved road north-west of the provincial capital of Mae Hong Son.

The young woman shoots photos while repeatedly muttering, "Incredible," and getting as close to her subjects as her lens permits.

The village's oldest female resident, Ma Le, 80, was undisturbed. She is used to such intrusions.

"Sometimes we receive three or four, sometimes up to 20 tour groups a day," says Mu La, sitting on her wooden hut's veranda and weaving a scarf.

The village's huts are built on stilts because the dirt track in front of them is regularly flooded in the wet season. There is no electricity.

"The tourists think we are primitive people," 23-year-old Zember says. "The guides say they don't want to see good roads or clean villages or anything modern, so we have to live like this to please the tourists."

When business is good and enough tour groups arrive, each of the 60 women wearing neck rings receives 1,500 baht a month from the village's Thai operators. The children and men get nothing at all, so the money has to support all 260 villagers.

During the off season, they get nothing, the villagers say. They rely heavily on donations from charities to survive.

Like most of her fellow villagers, Mu La fled her home country in the late 1980s to escape its brutal military regime.

"The soldiers came all the time," she says.

They forced the men to become porters on the front lines of the government's war against rebel armies and drove the women ahead of their ranks in case land mines were laid in their path.

She and many like her fled. Initially, she was sent to one of the many refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border.

But when Thai business people recognized the money-earning potential of the exotic-looking women, they suggested they move to three artificial villages near Mae Hong Son.

Some of the families aren't bothered that they have become "tourism magnets."

The village of Huay Sua Thao is populated mainly by economic migrants who were enticed to settle there to create a tourist attraction. Most of the villagers agree that their current lives are better than in Burma.

There also are people in the village of Huay Pu Keng who don't complain about their lot.

"We hope that more and more tourists will come," 52-year-old Mu Nan says.

She weaves shawls and sells souvenirs in front of her hut. She has worn her neck rings since she was a small child and says she has gotten used to tourists gawking.

She intends to sit it out until "better times arrive" and then return to Burma once peace returns, but Mu La in Kayan Tayar has given up hope after almost 20 years as a refugee.

In 2005, she applied with 20 other people from the three tourist villages for resettlement to New Zealand. The country accepted them and the United Nations agreed to cover the air fare, but her plan to start a new life was shattered when the Thai authorities refused to issue an exit visa.

"Those who don't live in the temporary shelters are not considered as refugees," says Tharit Charungvat, a spokesman for Thailand's Foreign Ministry in Bangkok. To grant the exit visas "would be unfair to those in the camps who are waiting in line for resettlement," he says.

"Apart from that, they voluntarily went to live outside of their camps," he adds. "They are free and earn money."

But the term "free" leaves a bitter taste in the villagers' mouths.

If they are caught outside their villages, they are arrested, they say, because they are not permitted to seek jobs elsewhere.

Kayan Tayar's women are particularly upset. They think the Thai authorities might deny them exit visas so their country doesn't lose a lucrative tourist attraction.

Disillusioned and angry, some of them decided to protest by removing their neck rings. They say they hope this makes it easier to get exit visas.

One of them, Zember, recalls: "After I had learned English, I was shocked when I finally understood the tourists' comments. They said they were disgusted that we displayed ourselves for a little money like animals in a zoo."

That was never the case, she insists. She remembers that she once was proud of her neck rings and that she even wanted to wear more.

"I wanted to be a proud Kayan woman," she says.

Today, Zember looks like any other young woman. "I just want to lead a normal life," she says defiantly.

Only her sloping shoulders belie her past years of wearing the heavy rings.

Mu La, a mother of eight, also contemplates taking off her 27 rings, which give her the longest neck in the village.

"I am proud of our tradition," she says but concedes that she is willing to sacrifice for a ticket to freedom.

"If that is the only way for me to leave here, I will take them all off," she asserts.

Ma Lo, another young woman, is equally frustrated and fed up with living in the village. She took her rings off, too.

There is a picture postcard in circulation that shows her breastfeeding her baby. Nobody asked her permission to publish the photo.

"I was so ashamed when I saw the postcard for the first time, but I couldn't do anything against it," she says. "I don't want to be treated like an exhibit anymore. I want some respect."

Source:
Oelrich, C. (2008, April 28). People as tourist magnets. Bangkok Post.

Illegal Burmese Labor Fuels Thailand Economy by William Boot

The deaths of more than 50 Burmese migrants last week in a sealed container truck transporting them to illicit jobs in southern Thailand starkly illustrates the growing reliance Thailand places on unofficial labor to help run its economy.

The Thai authorities acknowledge that there may be 1 million Burmese migrant workers living in Thailand, yet Thailands Migrant Assistance Program recently recorded that only 367,834 were registered with work permits in 2007.

Various NGOs campaigning for the rights of abused minorities and refugees say the number of illegal Burmese in Thailand is closer to 1.5 million. Many of them are children.

The Migrant Worker Group, a coalition of NGOs pressing for human rights, documents many instances of abuse by employers.

The MWG estimates that illegal Burmese laborers, especially in the booming construction industry, are paid up to 50 percent less than Thai unskilled labor and have no rights.

Migrant workers are very badly regarded and very badly treated by Thai society, wrote academic and former Thai Senator Jon Ungphakorn in the Bangkok Post. Yet it is hard to imagine how our economy would manage without them.

Ungphakorn says that since illegal laborers are not taking jobs away from Thais they should all be given legal status and employment rights.

Source:
Boot, W. (2008, April 19). Weekly Business Roundup. The Irrawaddy. Retrieved April 23, 2008 from http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=11461&page=1

A boom at the border By William Sparrow

I went to a "mom and pop" store for cigarettes. A very young woman was handling the transaction; thin, long hair, long legs, pretty face with no makeup. I wondered if she was 18.

As she turned and descended into the dark shop, an elderly women, presumably a relative, emerged from the shadows. She lunged from her seat, sensing opportunity. "You want she?" the woman asked, meaning "her" - the young woman.

I was shocked and caught off-guard and couldn't respond. In the silence, the elder woman continued "You want daughter? You take," she said, pointing. "Have hotel. Fifteen dollar."

"No," I said firmly. With that, the old woman scowled and slunk back to her seat.

The shop girl never met my eyes as she handed over the cigarettes. Still, I perceived a small smile.

A sex slave working as a shop girl; a young woman being sold by her own mother. It was a sad situation that I won't soon forget. Sadly, scenes like this will likely continue until the Myanmar government can improve the lives of its 55 million people. I was overcome by this realization as I settled the bill in that tiny shop on the Myanmar-Thai border.

As I turned to leave, I heard the shop girl whisper "thank you".

Read more at Asia Times

This is a business

"This is a business! Don't call me again!" said the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Hinthada Township before hanging up the phone abruptly.

http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=11367

One of the business owners responded to a phone call from the Irrawaddy magazine regarding the survery about the referendum.

I want to quote Lord Byron:

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

Burma -- a Land Where Nonsense Holds Sway

I want to share the following funny article by Dominic Faulder.

Call the country what you will, it's no place for a visit. By Dominic Faulder, in Asiaweek published on August 13, 2001.

A combat-ready infantryman fixed me with an unfriendly gaze, his assault rifle pointed in my direction. Before I could pass, he flicked open the flap on my bag and rummaged through my cameras, lenses and tape recorder. Presumably satisfied that I was not an off-duty ninja, he pushed open the door into a gloomy chamber I knew all too well. Right beside the Sule Pagoda in the center of Rangoon, I was once again in the reception room of the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism. In fact, I was there to meet Burma's 'Mr. Hospitality' himself.

The gentleman concerned rose from his chair. He wasted little time on pleasantries before sounding off on one of his pet peeves: foreign journalists. Lt.-Gen. Kyaw Ba was a powerfully built man who bristled in his crisp, dark-green uniform. He brought rare experience to Burma's embryonic hospitality industry. Previously, he had held one of the northern commands, a job that involved shooting Kachin insurgents when they popped up from their jade mines. One of the greatest disappointments of his career was failing to capture a Swedish journalist who had taken an extended walking tour across northern Burma with his wife and daughter but without, shall we say, "official permission."

Kyaw Ba was still vexed by this incident from nearly a decade before, and an aide had to remind him gently that I was actually a different journalist. With that cleared up, we got down to talking serious hospitality. We discussed hotel developments, airline capacity, visas, and promoting winter sports (that's another story). I have to say this was one of the stranger interviews in my career. Kyaw Ba spoke good English but was a big-picture man who didn't trouble himself much with detail. Whenever I asked a specific question, he would nod in the direction of a large pot plant. A junior officer would pop up from behind this camouflage, stand to attention and bark out the correct answer. "Can you tell me how many visitors came here last year?" Pot plant rustles. "Sixty-one thousand, sir."

That odd encounter came flooding back to me as I read the latest issue of Holiday Asia, which devotes many pages to the charms of Burma, unquestionably one of the most enticing and photogenic countries in Asia. Some things never change. Amid glorious scenes from the Irrawaddy, Pagan and Inle Lake was an announcement from Burma's Ministry of Transport concerning a new aviation tie-up with Singapore's Region Air. And what Burmese delight is showcased in the accompanying photograph? A welcoming inflight crew? A golden pagoda? No. It is a mug shot of the transport minister, Maj. Gen. Hla Myint Swe, in full uniform with all his campaign medals on display. Nice gongs.

Clearly, it still has not dawned on the powers that be in Burma that the last thing prospective visitors want to see is generals flaunting their battle honors. Holidaymakers and soldiers just aren't a natural mix. But it's very hard to explain this kind of thing to soldiers. Take just one example: Burma's delegation to the Beijing Women's Conference in 1995 was led by a man, the social welfare minister, Maj. Gen. Soe Myin. Keep that in mind next time you read some overly optimistic prediction of an early political settlement with Burma's most famous lady, Aung San Suu Kyi. In November 1996, Kyaw Ba launched a massive charm offensive on all fronts. Visit Myanmar Year was slated to attract 500,000 foreign tourists, never mind the problems of accommodation and airline capacity. "Negative publicity will not dampen the success of Visit Myanmar Year," boomed Kyaw Ba. The target was hopelessly missed -- even after Visit Myanmar Year had been extended for another year. Did foreigners stay away because they perceived Burma to be unsafe or because of the boycott campaign endorsed by Suu Kyi? Hard to say. But however safe Burma actually was and is, there is no question that most foreigners do not want to visit a country where the military may be prowling around on the streets living up to its well-earned reputation for treating the locals badly. That's a bit of a non-starter, boycott or not. Perception is everything.

The generals can't understand this sort of argument because for them uniforms, gongs and guns are the stuff of normal life, just like ordering people around. The bizarre highlight of the Visit Myanmar Year opening ceremony was a vast parade, mostly of young women dressed in ethnic costumes. They looked superb, but the effect was totally ruined by a senior army officer standing ramrod straight out front barking instructions at them over the PA system. To Kyaw Ba and the other generals beaming from the grandstand, this was just a march past in fancy dress with everybody following orders. Situation normal.

Of course, in most other places army officers marching ethnic maidens around stadiums would be considered distinctly abnormal. But if you want clearer evidence of the huge gulf between the way the generals think and the way most others think, look no further than the country's name problem. In 1989, it was changed officially from Burma to Myanmar by the de facto military government, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). In fact, the country went from Union of the Socialist Republic of Burma, to the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar in about six months. A lot of people were very upset, and have carried on calling the country Burma to register their disgust with an illegitimate regime that rose up out of a sea of blood. Twelve years on, most English-speakers still call it Burma. If that is not a ringing, inexpensive, international, vox pop rebuke, what is?

Some argued that it should have been Myanma, and others plunged into obscure and pedantic debate about whether Burma or Myanmar was more etymologically correct. In fact, if the generals had renamed the country Slorcland, the issue would have been the same. "Although in Burmese 'Bama' and 'Myanma' are used interchangeably for the name of the country, the choice of names in English has political connotations," explains Cristina Fink in Living Silence, a recent study of the country under military rule. "The military unilaterally changed the English name of the country without consulting the country's citizens."

To be even more contrary, the generals changed a lot of place names too. Rangoon became Yangon, Pagan became Bagan, Pegu became Bago, and so on. For a country supposedly promoting tourism, this was asking for trouble. The confusion continues to this day. There is also a muddle over the correct related adjectives and nouns. For example, are the good people of Myanmar (the Burmese as most people still call them) Myanmars, Myanmarish, Myanmaries, Myanmies, Myanmaies, Myanmaese, Myanmese, Myanmarese, or what? Got a headache? Join the club. I fear the militarily correct, but linguistically sad, answer is that the Burmese are now, officially, Myanmars.

The good news is that this battle will be fought not in Myanmar, but in the English-speaking world, and it will be common usage that dictates whether the people of Myanmar are referred to as Burmese or Myanmars, not the junta. I hope it's Burmese because at the end of the day it is simply a much more beautiful word in English. Saying that, of course, invites immediate official condemnation for being a sentimental colonialist stooge, so I'll go a step further: Burma is one of the most evocative and enchanting place names in the world -- a name to conjure up unforgettable holidays.

The more clipped Myanma would be an improvement on Myanmar, but I fear that irritating 'r' will be rolling around for years to come. But I shall of course be calling the country Myanmar in print except when referring to it when it was still known as Burma. Like it or not, this is the official name of the country accepted by the United Nations, ASEAN, etc., and tacitly by any country that accredits an ambassador there.

It does not matter whether I approve of that state of affairs or not. The world is chaotic enough already without having journalists running around making gratuitous political statements. Perish the thought.

Retrived from www.voicesforburma.org

Gambari in Burma

Kyaw San's words to Gambari

Kyaw San is the information minister.

"We are very astonished and dismayed for your involvement in this matter [releasing a letter on Aung San Suu Kyi's behalf in November]," Kyaw Hsan was quoted in the newspaper as saying.

"Sadly, you went beyond your mandate. Hence, the majority of people are criticizing it as a biased act. Some even believe that you prepared the statement in advance and released it after coordinating with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi," he said.

"The statement was dangerous to the degree of hurting the prevailing peace and stability of the nation," the minister said.

Read more

In Myanmar, a resistance hero on the run

Somewhere in the dilapidated city of Yangon is a man on the run since August last year. He has sheltered in over 10 homes so far. But he expects to continue avoiding arrest by Myanmar's dreaded military or intelligence forces.

When Tun Myint Aung shifts from one safehouse to another, he goes armed with two items that have become indispensable. They are a mobile phone and a portable, Chinese-made radio, to listen to such anti-junta stations like the Democratic Voice of Burma, based in Oslo, Norway.

Read more at Asia Times

China importing cheap and unsafe materials to Burma?

Most of the Adidas and Nike shoes I bought in the US were made in China. The quality was good, at least, because of the quality control imposed by the US government.

However, the products imported to Burma from China are dirt-cheap. There is also no quality control on both sides of the border. People with low income needs cheap and affordable materials.

The following quotes are from Fires Continue to Plague Mandalay.

A Burmese engineer now working in Singapore explained that the frequent occurrence of fires in Burma is largely due to the poor quality of materials used in the country.

There is no quality control by authorities in Burma, and most of the electrical materials that Burmese people use are imported from China. These are very cheap and don't last very long, he said.

No Olympics

Think global, act local.

Logo from http://uscampaignforburma.org/

Poor Burmese girls

Independent Appeal: Burma's girls are victims of China's one-child policy

No one ever expected it to be the young girls of Burma who would become the unintended victims of the one-child birth control policy in China. But two decades on, children as young as 10 are being trafficked across the border from Burma into China as child brides. They are sold into a future of high uncertainty.

Read more at the Independent.

Anger and Hatred

I was browsing through some Burmese blogs for information related to Burma. Some blogs are very informative and entertaining. Some are very poetic and imaginative. Some are full of gossips and personal attacks.

Some comments on the blogs did remind me of soc.culture.burma while I was a student in the US.

Back in the days of early and late 90s, Usenet newsgroup were the places where people shared information and ideas. It was before we know the web as we do today.

Anti-junta Burmese folks (they are majority in the virtual world of the Internet) would fight with the pro-junta people (minority) in discussion groups.

Some people just got tired of arguing and defaced www.myanmar.com on August 3, 2000.

People's hatred of the current military government can be seen online since the early 90s. The military has always crushed any calls for reforms in the history (in 1988, 1996, and 2007 as far as my life span is concerned). The people are generally not happy with the military regime. They expressed their anger when they can.

Today's blogs are also just a reminder of how people are fed up with the current situations in our beautiful country.

A Great Poet and Scholar, Min Thu Wun, Died

Min Thu Wun died yesterday on Sunday. Here is his obituary from the Irrawaddy. Min Thu Wun is a legend in Burma’s literary circles. He is a great poet and scholar. He was born in Mon State, Burma. He graduated from Oxford University.

Burma's Garment Industry

The pictures from this article were taken by my friend whom I helped keep up with the IT knowledge. The article is about Burma’s garment industry and whether the sanctions has done damages or not.

Brain Drain for Burma

This article, the Road to Riches, has touched on the future of the educated people in Burma. The smart kids are leaving Burma, seeking better future in developed countries. If our country does not change its political and economic system, the future remains bleak.