Day: August 17, 2021

The ethnic Karenni Army (KA) marked the 73^rd anniversary of its founding Tuesday vowing to “fight to the end” to rid Myanmar of its military dictatorship and create a federal union with like-minded groups in the multi-ethnic country.

The KA is one of at least 16 ethnic armed organizations thought to be active in Myanmar, a country of 54 million people with 135 official ethnic groups. The insurgent groups control territory along Myanmar’s borders with Bangladesh, China, India, and Thailand. Their histories – and grievances with the national military – stretch back to when the then Burma gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948.

“We were once a separate state but came under the rule of Burmese dictators,” KA leader Col. Phone Naing told a ceremony in in territory in Kayah state it controls along the border with Thailand, referring to the junta that has led Myanmar for nearly 50 of the country’s 73 years of independence.

“Under their rule, everyone knows how we have suffered bullying and oppression. The world knows. The reason for the formation of KA was to free ourselves from that situation and live in peace.”

Phone Naing said that the Karenni had always been able to overcome military invaders in the past and would do so again with the current junta, which seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government in a Feb. 1 coup.

The KA, the armed wing of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) with a force estimated at 1,500 troops, was joined by representatives of KA allied groups and members of the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM).

The KNPP urged its military wing to stay dedicated to the goal of forming a federal democratic union in Myanmar along with allied groups.

Collaboration between anti-junta movements made up of ethnic majority Bamars and longstanding ethnic armies, including military training in remote regions, has enabled opponents of the military regime to inflict casualties on better armed junta troops and sustain opposition to the coup, analysts say.

Speaking to RFA’s Myanmar Service after Tuesday’s ceremony, a CDM police officer who joined the KA after the Feb. 1 coup said nothing would deter the ethnic army from its fight against the military regime.

“For more than 70 years, we have been fighting to regain a Karenni state,” said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Together with the Karenni people, we will fight together to the end.”

A young KA soldier told RFA that a federal union is the only way to ensure adequate representation for Myanmar’s many indigenous groups.

“Only through such a system would we be able to protect our basic rights and achieve equality,” he said.

“We have made our decision to fight until the end to get rid of the military dictatorship.”

Peace efforts

The KNPP signed a regional state-level ceasefire agreement on March 7, 2012 under previous President Thein Sein’s military-affiliated civilian government, but has yet to sign the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) that 10 other ethnic parties have signed beginning in 2015.

The 10 rebel groups that signed the NCA suggested in June that the deal—inked in the presence of international observers and Myanmar’s highest legislature—remains in place, despite an already flailing peace process that was all but destroyed by the unpopular junta’s coup. However, they say they will not pursue talks with the military, which they view as having stolen power from the country’s democratically elected government.

Kayah state was relatively free of fighting until late May, when the military launched an offensive in the region. There are now daily clashes between junta troops and Karenni forces in the state’s Demawso, Phrusoe and Mobye townships, as well as in Phekone township on the border with southern Shan state.

An activist who declined to be named for safety reasons recently told RFA that around 1,000 refugees have fled to Karenni refugee camps on the border with Thailand since the last round of largescale clashes in the region, although he said that many more are living with close relatives or in the jungle to avoid the fighting.

“There are a lot of people left in the jungles since the last big clashes,” he said, adding that many are living in makeshift camps there because they “don’t dare return home.”

“Others have no home to return to. Some are staying in the forests because their families are separated. Some did not return because their loved ones were killed during the fighting.”

RFA has documented that more than 170,000 people have been displaced by fighting in Kayah state in the more than six months since the coup.

They join more than 500,000 refugees from decades of conflict between the military and ethnic armies who were already counted as IDPs at the end of 2020, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a Norwegian NGO.

The junta says a landslide victory by the NLD in the country’s November 2020 general election was the result of voter fraud, but has yet to provide evidence of its claims and has violently repressed widespread protests, killing 999 people and arresting 5,712 since the coup, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

Amid nationwide turmoil, the military has stepped up offensives in remote parts of the country that have led to fierce battles with several local militias.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Watching chaotic scenes of civilians being evacuated in helicopters from Afghanistan takes me back to the last day of the Vietnam War.

It was April 29, 1975 and I was determined to see as much as I could from inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon before boarding a helicopter to leave Vietnam.

I had spent nine years on and off covering the war in Vietnam from early 1966 until the spring of 1975.

But I’m no expert on Afghanistan. I visited the country only once and that was only briefly and while the country was still at peace. What I remember best from that time as I wandered around Kabul was seeing women whose head scarves covered everything but their eyes.

In Vietnam I thought that my Vietnamese language teacher would remain safe once the North Vietnamese took control in Saigon. I advised her to stay behind and take care of her mother. She lived a simple life and had no wealth or property that could be seized.

I told my Vietnamese interpreter that I could help to get him out of the country. He said that his only property was a small apartment and that he had nothing to fear. But in the end he was beaten up badly by Viet Cong interrogators.

With help from a U.S. Embassy official I helped to get a former South Vietnamese official whom I knew out of the country. He was likely to have been badly treated by the Viet Cong had he stayed behind. He made it to the roof an apartment building minutes before a U.S. helicopter landed to take him and a few others out of the country.

A total of more than 1.6 million Vietnamese, including 700,000 boat people, were resettled between 1975 and 1997. After stays in refugee camps in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, 400,000, or more than half of the boat people, settled in the U.S., while France, Australia, and Canada each took in more than 100,000.

Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, argued in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) on August 17 that an ongoing American presence in Kabul is needed.

These remaining Americans, he said, are needed to help thousands of Afghans who’ve worked either for the U.S. or the United Nations who have been unable to leave the country up until now.

Galbraith also said that the U.S. should offer to help Afghan journalists who have worked for or with U.S. news organizations.

According to statistics gathered by Brown University, more than 3,500 coalition soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001, roughly 2,000 of them Americans. More than 20,000 U.S. soldiers have been injured.

The U.S. Defense Department announced on Nov. 17, 2020 that it would reduce the number of U.S. troops from 4,500 to 2,500 by the end of January, 2021.

‘Gut-wrenching’ scenes

In Washington, President Biden has defended his order, made in April, to begin a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Biden called the current scenes of chaos in Kabul as “gut-wrenching.”

But, in remarks on Aug. 16, Biden declared that after 20 years of combat in Afghanistan, “I’ve learned the hard way that there will never be a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.”

The result, he said, would have been much the same five or 15 years from now.

In Kabul, Taliban fighters have showed apparent restraint up until now, setting up checkpoints but vowing not to disrupt lives or businesses.

But according to Post reporters, it was unclear to many residents whether that restraint was merely a tactical move to lull the international community or a longer-term policy.

The Taliban have a history of treating women brutally, so many observers are now watching for signs of how women are doing in areas under their control.

Under recent Afghan governments women have made significant strikes in breaking with traditional repression.

According to Ambassador Mark Green of the Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center, as of August 1 nearly 30 percent of the civil servants in Afghanistan were women.

When the Taliban last ruled, women weren’t permitted to work outside of their homes.

After the Taliban were ousted, a 2004 Afghan constitution explicitly prohibited gender discrimination.

Mark Green notes that U.S.-backed Afghan government made efforts to ensure that women were represented and participated in public life.

As of 2021, Afghan women were actively serving in the Afghan parliament and civil service. Child marriage declined, and many women entered the workforce for the first time.

Past practices persist

Unfortunately, according to a recent report from the Voice of America, in at least some parts of Afghanistan’s northern region under Taliban rule, some past practices still survive.  Provincial Taliban rulers have required that women there wear headscarves. They also are not to leave home without a male relative.

The Washington Post reported on Aug. 17 that the Washington area’s Afghan community was gripped by fear as much of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban over the weekend.

The Washington region has become home to a flourishing Afghan community in the two decades since the United States invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks in New York.

Many living in the region were former U.S. military interpreters or government aides who gained U.S. asylum.

In late July, 200 interpreters and their families arrived in Virginia, the first of some 2,500 being evacuated under a visa program, while the U.S. Senate approved $1 billion to evacuated and resettle them and voted to ease paperwork to grant 8,000 more visas for people who worked with the U.S. during the war.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were 156,000 people from Afghanistan in the United States in 2019, up from about 66,000 in 2006.

In the weeks before Saigon fell, writes former U.S. diplomat David Brown, “ultra-low profile improvisations of U.S. Embassy staff enabled the immigration of many thousands of Vietnamese who were employees of the U.S. Mission” in Vietnam.

There’s no doubt that members of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul have also engaged in much improvisation that we may not immediately hear about.

Dan Southerland is RFA’s founding Executive Editor.

Laos will no longer allow high-ranking government officials to use state-owned vehicles for personal use after they retire, a move aimed at saving money and solving a vehicle shortage that Lao citizens told RFA was a step in the right direction.

“We cannot take the state cars with us after we retire. It’s not allowed. High-ranking officials who have retired will have to sacrifice, starting from the central committee and downward,” Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh told a recent meeting of the national assembly.

“Once you retire, you’re retired and you can’t take the state’s car with you. But if you want to take it you should pay for it according to the law,” he said.

The push to rein in spending comes amid warnings from experts and officials that Laos has at least $400 million due in loans this year that can’t be repaid, and another $1 billion coming due each year from 2022-2025 to lenders in China, Thailand and Vietnam, amid a slump brought on the global pandemic.

Several Lao citizens told RFA that they were happy that the government was trying to eliminate wasteful spending.

“If they do this, I will be very happy, because the government wastes too much. Taking the state cars with them when they retire wastes the people’s money. They should just give the cars to another official instead of buying a totally new one,” a Lao citizen told RFA’s Lao Service.

Another citizen told RFA that the problem had been rampant among Lao officials. Some of the retiring officials even took two or more vehicles for their family members to use.

A former official who kept his government-issued vehicle after retirement told RFA that in some cases, the government awarded them cars for helping the country, but in others, the former officials took them out of a sense of entitlement.

“There were many officials who took cars worth over U.S. $100,000 with them when they retired, saying that they deserve the car for helping the country become developed,” the former official said.

The previous prime minister, Thongloun Sisoulith, who championed anti-corruption policies, famously sold 14 government-issued luxury cars used by retiring officials in 2016.

Among the cars were expensive imported Mercedes-Benz and BMW models that are beyond the means of ordinary citizens of Laos, whose GDP per capita is about $2,600 per year.

Reported by RFA’s Lao service. Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Teachers who joined Myanmar’s civil disobedience movement following the military coup in February have set up a school for children displaced by conflict in a temporary camp in a rebel army-controlled area of eastern Kayah state near the Thai border.

The internally displaced persons (IDP) camp where the school is located hosts more than 1,000 civilians, mostly ethnic Karennis, who fled their homes to escape fighting between the Myanmar military and Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) troops since May.

The KNDF is a new network of civilian resistance fighters that includes existing ethnic armed groups in the state and Karenni organizations.

Violent clashes between rebel and junta forces erupted in Kayah state’s Loikaw, Demoso, and Shadaw townships after the military coup on Feb. 1 overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Some 100,000 residents have fled their homes amid fighting in the state, taking shelter in Buddhist monasteries or in nearby hills and jungles.

The Education Department of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), the dominant ethnic political organization in the state, opened the school to provide uninterrupted instruction to the children, said Hsu Bu Rel, the department’s vice minister.

Children displaced by the conflict have not been able to attend classes for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit Myanmar in March 2020 and now is in its third wave. They then lost a second year of education because of political unrest in the country, Hsu Bu Rel said.

“We want the IDP children in our camp to have an opportunity for schooling,” he told RFA. “In addition, this school gives us opportunities to learn from the CDM [civil disobedience movement] teachers and to try out the new curriculum and teaching methods of the Karenni Education Department.

For security reasons, RFA is identifying the location of the camp school only as being in a KNPP-controlled area near the Thai border in Kayah state.

School principal Hla Moe Myint said more funding is needed for educational materials for the IDP children, school buildings, and additional teachers.

“Teachers can perform fully only if they have these materials in hand,” she said. “There are so many needs. Besides, we want to set up a library as they [the teachers] have expected. We have difficulties in fulfilling their needs.”

Teacher Hsu Khu Rel said the school serves students from grades one through 11 and uses both a national curriculum and a new one created by the Karenni Education Department.

Another teacher named Josephine said many educators from government schools, who walked out of work to join the CDM protests against the junta and fled arrest in their hometowns have joined the school.

“They have different teaching methods and a different schooling system,” she said, pointing to the teachers’ more sophisticated grading system that makes it tougher for students to pass tests because it is not based on traditional rote learning.

About 265 students had enrolled in the IDP camp school by the end of June, though additional ones were incoming, teachers said.

Eighth-grader Cherry Phaw said she was pleased to continue her education at the school.

“For more than two years I couldn’t go to school,” she told RFA. “We were on the run whenever there was fighting, so I couldn’t go to school. I am grateful to the teachers for enabling me to learn in school. I am happy here.”

Thoe Mel, the parent of students who attend classes at the school, said she is glad that she could enroll her children in school at a time when other schools across the country are closed because of ongoing crackdowns by the military regime and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My children haven’t gone to school for two years,” she said. “I am so happy now they are going to school. I am very optimistic.”

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Pop stars, celebrated comedians, and beloved poets are among 130 Myanmar artists to have died in the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic since the beginning of July — deaths that loved ones blame on poor medical treatment in a country in turmoil six months after a military coup.

The loss of life in the worlds of literature, film, music, and theater in the country of 54 million people comes at a time when artists and entertainers are struggling to make ends meet after 18 months of venue lockdowns to fight the pandemic, followed by chaos since the Feb. 1 military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

According to an RFA tally, 73 writers and poets, 22 cartoonists and painters, 18 film stars and theater performers, and 18 singers and songwriters have died in recent weeks — a death toll that might undercount nationwide fatalities in the arts.

As of Tuesday, Myanmar recorded nearly 361,300 confirmed coronavirus cases, including 3,306 new ones, and 13,623 deaths, including 178 new related fatalities since the pandemic first hit the country in March 2020, according to figures from the Ministry of Health and Sports.

While a handful of artists died of natural causes, most succumbed to the COVID-19 virus, which has seen a resurgence in Myanmar with the highly contagious delta variant.

Family members and friends of the cultural figures who passed away said they died from a lack of proper medical care because hospitals and clinics were closed when the third virus wave began in early June. Many doctors and other health professionals had joined the nationwide anti-coup movement and were fired.

The deceased included writers Hsinbyukyun Aung Thein, Theik Tun Thet, Khin Saw Tint, Sindewa Myat Phone, Annawar Soe Moe, Nyi Zay Min, and Khin Maung Win, and poets Min Yu Wai, Aung Cheimt, Maung Thin Khine, and Lu Zaw Thit.

Poet Min Yu Wai was the founder of Ngwe Taryi, a once-popular magazine in Myanmar. Aung Cheimt, who was popular among young people for his poem “Let Me Lose, Let the Dhamma Win,” was recognized as a leading writer of modern Burmese poetry.

Popular female writer Thwe Sagaing said the deaths have been a great loss for the country’s cultural scene.

“It’s very sad that deaths of these leading people in the literary world, scholars, poets, and writers are a great loss for Myanmar’s literary world,” she said. “These are huge losses for the country as well.”

‘We’ve seen a lot of losses’

Cartoonist Zaw Weik, sculptor Sonny Nyein, and modern artist Dr. Ko Ko Gyi also died. Ko Ko Gyi, known for his abstract paintings, was also a practicing psychiatrist who treated traumatized political prisoners.

In the field of music, songwriters Tony Tin, Tetkatho Aye Maung, Yazar Win Tint, and Ohn Lwin of the Burmese band Gita Net Than, pop singer Raymond, and Zaw Min Oo, who became famous after appearing on the “Myanmar Idol” TV program, also died.

Sai Lay, a top pop singer, said the unexpected deaths of young people in the music industry would not have occurred if preparations had been made for the third wave of the COVID-19 virus.

“When these deaths occur, we can do nothing but grieve,” he said. “These deaths would not have come about if we had good health care.”

In the fields of film and theater, the virus claimed Nyunt Win, a veteran film star from the Academy of Performing Arts, famous comedians San Ma Tu and Maung Myittar, and Myanmar orchestra conductors Sayar Gyi and Sein Muttar, who was a two-time Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Award winner.

Comedian Maung Myittar was popular for performing thangyat, a satirical work akin to modern slam poetry that usually includes humorous criticism of politics, society, and the military, during the Thingyan Buddhist New Year. For several years, he had costarred in the “A Kyo Hmyaw, Hno Zaw Baya Zay” weekly features for RFA’s Myanmar Service.

Writer Kyaw Myo Khaing said both the military government and the shadow government comprised of ousted politicians failed to prevent further COVID-19 outbreaks.

“We’ve just had to watch helplessly,” he said. “The junta government couldn’t do anything, and the National Unity Government in exile could not manage [the situation] effectively.”

“They could only give guidance to people in theory. In the meantime, we’ve just had to stay healthy because no one knows what will happen next,” he added.

Moe Kyaw Thu, chairman of the Myanmar Poets’ Union, said that artists have their work cut out for them replacing the work of lost luminaries.

“We’ve seen a lot of losses in music, art, and literature. From an artistic point of view, it has hurt us a lot. It hurts so much that at some point they will have to restart it all over again, helping one another. They’d have to do it in every sector.”

“We now hear every day about the death of one or two, and then another the next day,” he said.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

North Korea has banned its trade representatives in China from making money on the side to support themselves and will punish those who violate the restrictions for betraying the party and the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, sources in China told RFA.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, about 95 percent of North Korean international trade was with China and trade officials sent there lived relatively privileged lives, making deals with Chinese companies for goods to import into North Korea.

But since the beginning of the pandemic in Jan. 2020, Beijing and Pyongyang closed their border and suspended all trade. The trade representatives now found themselves stranded in a foreign land with no income.

To make enough money for food and rent, many found second jobs at local businesses.

“The North Korean delegation in Dalian is investigating the trends of trade workers this month,” a North Korean trade worker in the city about 170 miles west of North Korea told RFA’s Korean Service Aug. 10.

“They want to identify trade officials who are doing business at the request of Chinese companies or working for them temporarily to make personal money,” said the source who requested anonymity for security reasons.

“The investigation began when someone reported to the central government that many of the North Korean trade officials in China, who had been suffering from economic difficulties due to their income being cut off with the long-term suspension of trade for the coronavirus, started working temporarily for Chinese companies to make money,” said the source.

“In fact, a significant number of trade workers in China do temporary jobs, such as delivering food for Chinese restaurants, to earn the monthly rent for their homes,” the source said.

After learning that many trade officials were moonlighting, the North Korean authorities ordered that all of those found to have done temporary work should be punished.

“They said that the trade workers were dispatched overseas on behalf of the motherland and doing low-skilled trivial work for Chinese restaurants undermines the pride of the country,” said the source.

Another North Korean trade worker, based in Dandong, which lies across the Yalu River border from North Korea’s Sinuiju, confirmed to RFA that investigations into trade representatives, trade workers and interpreters there were underway there also.

“North Korea authorities are concerned that the trade workers who are facing hardship due to the suspension of trade could move to another area of China to find a temporary job or do chores to make money without reporting it. They could then be absorbed into hostile forces,” said the second source, using a catch-all term meant to describe anyone not under the direct control of the North Korean regime.

“The authorities say that if trade officials and trade workers meet with anyone to make a personal request because they are having a hard time making a living, it can compromise security to the point that it could even be an unknown betrayal of the party and the leader with fatal consequences,” the second source said.

“I don’t know how many trade workers will be caught in the investigation, but I’m very concerned about how it will end, at a time when there are very few people who have never worked for Chinese companies or restaurants in times like these.”

Though most cross-border trade between North Korea and China is on hold, RFA reported in April that shipments of Chinese corn were delivered to North Korea by rail. The development led many to believe that trade between the two countries could resume soon, but the suspension remains in place.

Reported by Hyemin Son for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin. Edited by Joongsok Oh. Written in English by Eugene Whong.