the crooked line

The Australian National University (ANU) and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) recently held their biannual Burma Update conference in Canberra.

The conferences tend to attract heated debate with a good mix of academics, practitioners, Burmese nationals and activists. Nevertheless it is an insular gathering really geared towards how the western international community can respond to Burma’s predicament. Representation of ethnic issues was seriously lacking. The only input from locals working on the ground was Mahn Mahn’s paper on the Back Pack Health Worker Teams.

One of the key outcomes of the conference was the need to address poverty, in particular to use the economy as leverage for dialogue with the Burmese military and subsequently assistance that can bring about change. Those familiar with Burma will know that poverty underpins almost every aspect of the lives of those living in Burma. Charles Petrie, who until recently was the resident UN Coordinator in Burma, called the uprising in August/September an “articulation of suffering”. He used his presentation to point out that the Burmese military’s economic policy encourages dependency and is therefore a disincentive for a functioning economy. And that while investment in infrastructure has increased, investment in social services hasn’t and this is creating major problems both now and for Burma’s future.

Some interesting points raised across the presentations:

• A recent UN survey found that 90% of Burma’s population spend less than US$240 a year, of that 75% is spent on food
• The Burmese military do not respond kindly to criticism of their ability to manage the economy
• Order 596 makes it illegal to talk about the constitution, yet delegates were charged with going into their communities and letting the population know what the constitution was about
  
• 80% of Burma’s import trade happens cross-border and 60% of export trade happens cross-border (this type of trade is not affected by the trade sanctions imposed by the US and EU)
• Private education in Burma is proliferating at an alarming rate
• Displacement causes a 2.4 increase in child death; 3.1 increase in child malnutrition; 4.5 increase in landmine injury
• 2% of the Burmese population has HIV/AIDS, however it is currently controlled and not the epidemic it is often talked of
  
• Commercial sex workers have followed the HIV/AIDS trend rather than led it; injecting drug users are a significant contributor

Summings up by Ashley South and Morten Pedersen really tried to focus on the idea of practical and durable action. I paraphrase but these are some of the suggestions:

• Greater focus needs to go towards the process rather than the outcomes
• There needs to be a durable negotiation process – inclusive of the opposition and the ethnic nationality groups
• Build capacities – both at the community and individual level
• Encourage the development of a more inclusive opposition
• Maintain diplomatic pressure including incentives for the Burmese military to adopt change
• More assistance is needed – both humanitarian and beyond
• Pressure at the governmental level needs to be complimented by development of the grassroots level
• Identify entry points for further dialogue, for eg health, poverty reduction or global issues such as drugs and trafficking

Most of these suggestions are not necessarily new, however they do emphasize the need to address Burma’s devastating decline from a multi-approach level. The overall message from the conference was the need to conduct a unified approach - that means those working inside Burma, those in the border regions and the international and exiled communities. A strong, unified message will be Burma’s greatest ally. The conference’s silence on ethnic issues is a worrying weakness in attaining this unity.

As usual there should be a book of the various papers, published some time in the new year. Keep an eye out on the website for publication dates.

This is far from conclusive but gives you an idea of the breadth of response

Burmese living inside Burma

• Monks take to the streets to protest the rise in fuel prices
• The military regime reacts violently, beating a number of monks
• The monks set a deadline for an apology from the military, none is forthcoming
• A line of protesting monks goes by Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. She emerges and spends 10 minutes with the monks
• Monks are joined by civilians as the protesting crowds gather momentum
• Protests are reported in other centres throughout the country, including Mandalay and Sittwe Continue reading ‘What response to these latest protests’

There is always the risk in such large scale events that the smaller things go by the wayside.

Last week there were reports that the Burmese military’s 22nd Battallion has been recalled from Karen State to the Rangoon. Indeed a Karen friend along the border has confirmed this is the case.

The 22nd Battallion is one of those notorious groups that instills fear just by mentioning its name. It owes its reputation of course to the 1988 uprising, when it was responsible for firing into unarmed crowds, killing thousands of civilians. Continue reading ‘Burma’s 22nd Battallion’

You’d be forgiven for thinking history is repeating itself. Only this time there is at least one significant difference. Access to immediate information.

You Tube, blogs, email, video taken from mobile phones - this time its less about the mainstream media on the ground and more about where they are getting their information from. Photos are catapaulted out via email, sometimes shaky footage taken on the run, but an immediate documentation of what is going on right now! Check our here and here to see the footage. Mainstream media is calling for footage and eyewitness accounts of those inside Burma. Continue reading ‘Blogging the Burma conflict’

Burma is at a crossroads right now.
I sit here contemplating the biggest mass movement Burma has seen in contemporary times. A mass movement of people standing before the military’s guns…at this time they do so peacefully. It is inevitable that comparisons are drawn with 1988. Only the world is a different place, media coverage for one, and we can only hope that this time the outcome will be different. Continue reading ‘Burma: how long do they have to stand peacefully?’

The young Karen boy watches his grandmother pound the husks from the rice. She tells him the story of an old hta.

“We can only dream this,” she says. “But in your time I think it will happen. A centipede will swallow all the human beings on the earth.”

The Karen hta fascinates me. It is a form of oral poetry, only it is much more than this. For many generations it was the way in which the Karen communicated; an educational medium in fact. A way in which the older generation passed on knowledge to the younger generation. Given that contemporary Karen written communication only occurred in the 1800s you can see the importance or oral communication to Karen history. Continue reading ‘When the centipede swallows the human’

It’s been a while. I hope you all haven’t given up. At least I hope there was enough of interest here to sustain you during these few months of silence.

I’ve just come back from the border area. Much is the same as it has been for the past twenty years, but much is changed.

I’ve talked of resettlement here before, and generally it gets the most impassioned responses, especially from the Karen community themselves. Resettlement was all people talked about on this trip. Resettlement has been on the agenda for years now but this time the talk is most certainly replaced by action. Refugee registration through UNHCR has proliferated and people are being moved to third countries in the hundreds. Continue reading ‘Resettlement update’

Woops…where does the time go.

It’s been a good five weeks and I have no real excuse. Perhaps its the thesis which seems to get neglected and then emerges as my other - loathed and loved all at once.
But I’ve raised my head to realise that Aung San Suu Kyi has just been handed her eleventh year of house arrest.
It’s heartening to see it hasn’t gone unnoticed in the international arena, but then it rarely does go unnoticed when Aung San Suu Kyi’s involved. Continue reading ‘Welcome to year eleven…’

Anyone whose had experience with international agencies in the documentation of human rights knows their oft-repeated response is “We need facts. We need hard, objective documentation of names, places, positions and what actions were employed against the victims. We need documentation that shows injuries and deaths.” It’s a callous, often depersonalised response, part of me knows the need for it, but part of me is appalled at its ability to take the human out of the story. Continue reading ‘getting the message across’

I’ve been mulling over this photo for days now.
I can’t pull my thoughts into any cohesive explanation of it.
So I’ll just throw a few observations out there.

Punk at a buddhist celebration - I can’t find any connection in it.
It’s a party, which warrants a dressup, but parties are so rare in Burma and any gathering of say more than five people and you’re guaranteed a military presence. As it’s THE party of the year though, perhaps its an unprecedented opportunity.
People look happy…it’s nice to see
Punk can look quite aggressive don’t you think, I’m surprised there wasn’t some knee-jerk response.
Hip hop, punk…i’ve talked of hip hop before on this blog and perhaps there are similar arguments to why the Burmese embrace punk. In a tightly-controlled, conservative, religious and narrow-minded country, it becomes increasingly understandable why this anti-establishment genre of music is embraced.
It’s about youth rebellion, anti-authoritarian ideologies and distinctive clothing. Is it a protest clothed in piercings, rock shirts and mohawks?
The Burmese military probably had no idea what they were witnessing.

I wonder if the Ramones ever thought they’d make it to Burma?