Burmese unicode converter

I thought I would share this Perl script I have written to convert Burmese unicode from version 4.1 to 5.1. If any of you find it useful, please feel free to use it with GPL license. If you find any bugs, please let me know.

Download it here.

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

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

Burmese-English dictionary

I have been busy working with the visual input system for our dictionaries. Check out the beta version for Burmese.

Go to http://burmese.sealang.net

Click on the keyboard icon (on your left panel) as shown in the following picture.

Click on the input characters so you can see the prediction. Please wait for a fraction of a second (because of the server delay) after you click on the characters. You will see the predicted Burmese words based on the dictionary order as in the following picture.

Warning about fonts

• If you use Zawgyi font, you won't see the correct rendering of some characters, especially subscript forms. Zawgyi is incompatible with the Unicode standard.
• Our dictionary uses the old Unicode standard with UTN #11 (the documentations are listed below)
1. Representing Myanmar In Unicode, Details and Examples by Martin Hosken and Maung Tun Tun Lwin
2. Myanmar Unicode Standard
• The old unicode standard was implemented in some fonts, such as Padauk, Myanmar1 and MyMyanmar. Get MyMyanmar here.

Those who dare

The lights had gone down, the film was about to begin, and the young Thai couple were cosily ensconced in the big Bangkok cinema when the popcorn started flying. Most of it landed on the woman, hurled by a man to her right. Soon he was slapping her with a rolled-up film flyer, and screaming at her and her boyfriend to get out of the cinema.

As the rest of the audience joined in, jeering, throwing water bottles and urging on the assailant, the two made their retreat. The incident reached its climax this week when the boyfriend, Chotisak Onsoong, was charged with an offence that could land him in jail for 15 years. His alleged crime was simple: during the playing of the royal anthem which precedes all films in Thai cinemas, he had remained in his seat.

Mr Chotisak, a 27-year old businessman and political activist, is the latest person to be prosecuted under Thailands stringent lèse majesté laws, which make it a crime to defame, insult or threaten the King, Queen or heir to the throne.

Unquestionably, many Thais revere 80-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, whose image is seen in almost every office, many homes and on giant billboards hung every few hundred yards above Thailands roads. But others see the law as a tool of oppression and a means of intimidating those who peacefully question the status quo.

"Not standing up is not an offence against anyone --- that's what I think," Mr Chotisak said in yesterdays Bangkok Post, after being charged on Tuesday. "The public have the right to make a choice whether to rise or not . . . I would like to stress that what I did was not intended to insult or express vengeance to the King. I was simply enjoying my right to freedom of expression." In Thailand academics struggle for the right even to discuss the monarchy, let alone criticise it. And in recent years there has been an increase in accusations of lèse majesté.

Mr Chotisak is that rare thing in Thailand --- an overt Republican. His girlfriend is a Muslim, and objects to the idolisation of a human. But their ordeal was mild, compared with those of some dissenters.

I have to respect Chotisak, who is brave enough to challenge and question status quo. He also said the following:

"In a country where the majority of the people eat rice and I choose to eat noodles, it is my right to choose. It's legal."

Source:
Parry, R.L. (2008, April 24). Filmgoer faces jail in Thailand for sitting during the national anthem. Times Online. Retrieved April 24, 2008 from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3803939.ece
Thai activist challenges royalist ritual at nation's cinemas (2008, April 25). The International Herald Tribune. Retrieved April 25, 2008 from http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/25/asia/AS-GEN-Thailand-Royal-Anthem.php

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: Padauk, Parabaik, ParabaikSans, and Myanmar3. I have the download link for Padauk 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.
• Padauk: 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

Ludu Daw Amar's Funeral

Ko Hla has pictures of Ludu Daw Amar's funeral.

Photos by Rev. Wo Le

If you are like me and crazy about country life in Burma, here are some pictures. Rev. Wo Le took them on his trips to churches all over Burma as his capacity as the secretary of Lisu Baptist Convention.

Church

School

Water

Innocent lives

Life style

Trucks

Carts

Photos

A building on the bank of Chao Phraya river (Photo by Beauty Shwe)

A Burmese lady (Photo source is unknown and may have copyrights held by the photographer)

Photos by Wawlay

I wanted to post some pictures by Rev. Wo Le. He took these pictures while he was travelling all over Burma visting Lisu churches. I hope to remind you of village life style in Burma.

A big tree

A village (rather a town?) in Burma

A day in the village

A house in the village

A kid in the village

Baptism (village style)

Village family

Chef

Chef tasting food

Sunset

Fetching water

Bathing

Kitchen

Teapot

Dinner

Old pictures from the US

I found my old pictures of my mission trip to Shiprock, New Mexico. I took the trip while I was in the States. We stayed at a Navajo Indian church and here are some pictures.

Shiprock, New Mexico

Lwin Moe after painting an old Navajo Indian lady's house in Shiprock, NM

Pastor Eric Lee talking to our group

A Hogan in Shiprock, NM

Lwin Moe and Molly repairing the roof of an old Navajo lady's house

Mission Team after painting an old Navajo lady's house

My two (adopted) sisters

Heather, Molly and Lwin at Albuquerque airport

Lwin Moe with a Navajo family

With Navajo ladies from Mesa View Church

Jared and Lwin

Lwin in Shiprock, NM

Blue Sky and a tree near the Day Care Center we worked

A beautiful field

Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado

Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado

Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado

Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado

Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado)

Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado)

From Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado)

Lwin Moe after Missoin Trip

Lwin Moe after Missoin Trip with Diana (host-mom)