Govt Appeals to Monks to Lift Boycott

On a hot evening in early September, a dark blue Toyota Double Cab parked outside a temple in Mandalay. It was there to pick up a monk who five years earlier had played a major role in issuing an excommunication order on members of the military and their families. The order, which marked the beginning of the 2007 Saffron Revolution against Myanmar’s then ruling junta, was imposed after a crackdown on a small monk-led protest in Pakokku, Magway Region, in early September 2007. That incident led to much larger demonstrations around the country that were also suppressed by force, creating a lasting fissure between two of Myanmar’s most powerful institutions: the military and the monastic community. The monk in Mandalay was taken to a hotel on 80th Street, where in a room on the third floor he met four people who turned out to be senior government officials seeking an end to the monks’ patam nikkuijana kamma, or formal refusal to accept alms. This secret meeting led to subsequent talks, where the monks stated their demands, including a full apology and the reinstatement of monks removed from their monasteries for taking part in the protests. No deal has yet been reached, but if successful, the negotiations could bring closure to one of the most acrimonious episodes in recent Myanmar history.

MI Comeback: Mission Impossible?

For decades, Myanmar was ruled by fear of the MI—the dreaded Military Intelligence. The ouster in 2004 of former spy master Gen Khin Nyunt marked the end of the MI’s reign of terror, but not of MI-phobia. Even after his release from house arrest earlier this year, some of his subordinates remain behind bars—most notably, ex-Brig-Gen Than Tun, the head of the MI’s counter intelligence unit and political department. Sentenced to 160 years in prison, he is unlikely to see the light of day anytime soon. His crime: gathering information on high-ranking military officials, against the orders of ex-supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe himself. Evidently, ordinary citizens weren’t alone in feeling the MI’s baleful influence: senior members of the former junta, including the country’s top general and his deputies, also distrusted its constant scrutiny. According to former counterintelligence officer and Myanmar deputy chief of mission to Washington ex-Maj Aung Lynn Htut, suspicion of the MI still runs deep among senior leaders of the current government. Besides keeping MI officials under lock and key, the former regime and its successor have made sure that the Military Affairs Security, which was formed to replace the MI, never gets a chance to accumulate the same sort of power.

Tycoon Fights Protesters with Feng Shui

When threatened with a public protest in front of his company’s headquarters, Yuzana chief U Htay Myint used an extraordinary defense—he paid a Thai feng shui master 4,000,000 kyat (US $5,000) per day to ward off looming ill-fortune. U Htay Myint, who is also a Lower House MP for the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, has faced pressure for confiscating land in war-torn Kachin State. To fend off his client’s critics, the mystic for hire repositioned a red light bulb on the reception-area ceiling to face outwards—“to repel destructive elements coming from outside,” according to an Intelligence source. He also identified a jinx on the Yuzana logo and suggested an alternative. A pool at U Htay Myint’s Rangoon residence was deemed another source of peril. The 58-year-old tycoon, who hails from Myeik in Burma’s deep south but has Chinese ancestry, then reportedly made a day trip to Singapore for yadaya che—a ritual aimed at reversing bad luck or compensating for misdeeds. In 2006, Yuzana seized more than 200,000 acres (80 hectares) of farmland near the world’s largest tiger reserve in Kachin State’s remote Hukawng Valley, forcing nearly half a million people off the land they have lived on for generations.