BORDER JOURNEY: TWO DECADES ON THE
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The Irrawaddy magazine covers Myanmar, its neighbors and Southeast Asia. The magazine is published by Irrawaddy Publishing Group (IPG) which was established by Myanmar journalists living in exile in 1993.
EDITOR (English Edition): Kyaw Zwa Moe
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Sandy Barron
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CONTRIBUTORS to this issue: Aung Zaw; Kyaw Zwa Moe; Bertil Lintner; Zarni Mann; Laetitia Millois; Sean Havey; Kyaw Phyo Tha; Lisa Shwe; Kyaw Hsu Mon; Saw Yan Naing; Thierry Falise; Nyein Nyein; Andrew D. Kaspar; William Boot; Marwaan MacanMarkar; Simon Roughneen.
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16 |
Sports: Athletes, Organizers Ready for SEA Games
After decades of isolation, Myanmar gears up to host the region’s most important sporting event
20 | Border: Two Decades on the Trail of the Wa
Myanmar’s most feared ethnic armed group gains new strength, but for ordinary Wa, life remains as difficult as ever
24 | Society: Riding the Death Highway
Frequent accidents and fatalities have given the road between Yangon and Naypyitaw a fearsome reputation
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The coming peak tourism season will be Myanmar’s biggest yet, but can the country handle the expected influx of tourists?
After decades of dominating Myanmar’s skies, domestic carriers brace for turbulent times ahead
38 | Banking: Shadow of Decade-old Crisis Looms over Credit Card Plans
Memories of a financial meltdown in 2003 weigh heavily on Myanmar banks’ hopes to reintroduce consumer-friendly credit services in the near future
42 | Roundup: Japan’s Nissan to Assemble Cars, Trucks at New Myanmar Factory
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As the political landscape of Nepal changes, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders make unprecedented gains in the halls of power
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Myanmar’s international standing has greatly improved over the past two years, but it is still in bad company as far as human rights are concerned
As the chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust, U Thant Myint-U seeks to preserve the architectural legacy of the city’s long history, including its many fine colonial-era buildings and its magnificent ancient pagodas. But for the US-born, Cambridge-educated historian and author of two acclaimed books on Myanmar, this mission is just part of a much wider vision: the transformation of Yangon into a modern city that cherishes its past and its natural environment, even as it accommodates the needs of business and ordinary citizens.
In this interview, U Thant Myint-U speaks with Kyaw Zwa Moe, the editor of The Irrawaddy’s English-language editon, about the challenges that Yangon faces as it tries to avoid the development pitfalls that many major Asian cities have struggled with. He says that while his ideas have been well-received by both the city’s government and President U Thein Sein, public support will also be crucial if the kind of city he envisions is to become reality.
city that works for business, and a city that is beautiful and attractive, and that can be really a great city going forward, as well.
Earlier this year, you gave a presentation to President U Thein Sein, and his response was very encouraging. So far, how much have you done and what is the current status of your project?
We have been part of a committee that includes us, the city government, and people from other industries to craft a zoning plan for the city. It’s the first zoning plan for Yangon in a long time. That is now finished. We hope very much that this will be officially adopted. We are also looking at the possibility of a conservation law.
Let’s imagine the future. What is your vision of Yangon in a decade?
I’d like to see a Yangon that is both modern and also protects its very special heritage—and takes advantage of its natural position, as well. What we have right now is a city that goes back hundreds of years. We have ancient monuments like Shwedagon. We have a very special collection still of colonialera architecture. We have a very green city. We have two lakes, we have parks, and we have this amazing waterfront.
At the same time we need more modern development—we need more roads, bridges, airports, infrastructure and electricity. We need high-rise buildings, shopping centers, everything. What I want to see is a vision and a plan that combines all these things in the right way, learning lessons from others’ experiences and avoiding some of the mistakes that have been made by other cities in the region.
How difficult do you think it will be to realize this vision?
I think it is a big challenge. I think
the good thing is that the Yangon government is also very committed to trying to find the right way forward. They have been working very closely with the Japanese aid agency JICA in developing a master plan for the city, but mainly for the infrastructure, sewage, sanitation, transport, all of these issues. I think they are also very aware of the need to try to protect some of the colonial-era buildings and to protect the views of the Shwedagon as well.
Having said that, there are hundreds of challenges. Right now the market incentives are all wrong in terms of trying to protect a lot of the old buildings. And we’re entering into this period where there’s enormous pressure on land, where land ownership is unclear, where different government agencies own different pieces of land.
I think the last big challenge is for the poor people in this city. I think one thing is to protect the old architecture, one thing is to make this city work for business, but it also has to work for ordinary people. The trick is how do you combine all of these things—a city that works for ordinary people, a
Separately with the encouragement of the President’s Office, we are also starting a system of landmark plaques around the city. It can help tourists, but we also want it to help Myanmar people and people living here to really appreciate what has happened in these buildings. They forget all the Myanmar history that has taken place in these buildings. We are also trying to work with travel agencies to develop a project in a way that will also benefit people downtown.
How can you educate people to preserve and appreciate the heritage buildings?
The most important thing to convince people is visualization. People have to see what we are talking about. We’ve talked about it. We can write about it. But what we want to do in the next couple of months are really high-tech visualizations of what Yangon can look like in the future.
What makes Yangon unique?
There are many Asian countries that had very special architecture in the past, but almost all of that has been destroyed. Look at Bangkok, look at Jakarta and Singapore. Lee Kwan Yu said one of the big mistakes that he had made was destroying all the colonial architecture of the city.
[Besides its colonial architecture], Yangon has Shwedagon and Sule Pagoda [and other] great centuries-old
monuments that will always be here. We still have a very green city, and then we have a city with rivers on three sides. We can make the waterfront not just an industrial area, but also a place that’s accessible to people to walk and enjoy themselves.
The Yangon City Development Committee’s heritage list includes about 189 buildings. Have you managed to update the list?
buildings and [deciding] what the regulations [should be] for privately owned buildings that are over 50 years old.
There is a national heritage law which covers structures over 100 years old. That is the only law. So in theory, the Secretariat, for instance, could be considered covered by that law, and there are penalties for anyone who damages these structures. But
How confident are you that you will succeed?
I’m confident that we will at least achieve what we set out to do, which was to protect 30 or 40 iconic buildings. I’m quite confident that no one is going to destroy these buildings. And I’m quite confident that the views of Shwedagon will be protected. I think we’ve achieved that in partnership with the government. Whether we can
Actually I think it’s 188. I think one’s been destroyed over the past 10-15 years. The YCDC is committed to protecting the buildings on this list, but there is no law behind it. So the list needs to be updated, and it needs to be backed by law. Over the past year, we have been doing a survey of about 500 buildings downtown. We will try to decide what the criteria should be for including buildings on the list. Including public buildings is not too much of a problem—the issue will be how to include privately owned
my understanding is that the law was really intended to cover archaeological sites, like Bagan, and not urban structures, which have special issues about them. So I think in the future, it would be good to move towards a national urban heritage law. But that will take years, I think.
So what we’re hoping for is a local conservation law that [covers] both buildings on the list and buildings in conservation zones. Our zoning plan includes parts of downtown Yangon.
protect many hundreds of other buildings, including privately owned buildings, remains questionable. Whether we can come up with a scheme that will benefit the poor and middleincome people living downtown and keep old communities intact is also a question mark. Whether we can integrate this work into a broader urban vision is still a work in progress. So I think we have a core achievement, but we still have to work very hard. And we still need to have very strong public support.
U Thant Myint-U: ‘We still need very strong public support.’SHOWDOWN:
on
— Steve Chabot, a member of the US House of Representatives and chairperson of a House panel that oversees policy toward East Asia
—Myanmar beauty queen Khin Wint Wah, on her participation in the Miss Supranational 2013 beauty pageant, held in the Belarusian capital Minsk
“It is far too soon to initiate military engagement between the US and Burma.”
“Everyone knows the genie is out of the lamp and doesn’t want to go back, so there is no going back at all.”
— U Ken Tun, CEO of the Parami Energy Group of Companies,
the possibility of Myanmar’s government backsliding on reforms
“I was very excited, because I had never traveled overseas before… My country is very beautiful, but so is Belarus.”
another officer who worked under Pol.-Lt. Maung Tint told The Irrawaddy.
Fighting between Myanmar army forces and Kachin rebels intensified after talks between the government and the United Nationalities Federal Council
(UNFC), an ethnic alliance, failed to produce a longanticipated breakthrough. The talks, held in the first week of September, aimed to reach an agreement on a
by the trafficking gang led by Naw Kham, a Myanmar national who was executed in China in March after being found guilty of killing 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in October 2011.
nationwide ceasefire. Soon after the talks concluded, Kachin sources reported a resumption of fighting between government troops and the armed wing of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), a key UNFC member. However, despite reports early in the month that the Myanmar army had sent reinforcements to southern Kachin State’s Bhamo District in preparation for a fresh offensive, some 200 government troops were later reportedly withdrawn from the district’s Mansi Township, as the two sides met in the state capital Myitkyina to prepare for further negotiations, expected in early October.
ers who are staying in the country without proper legal documentation. On Sept. 2, about 2,500 migrants were detained by Malaysian authorities, of whom 555 were Myanmar nationals.
Relatives and friends attend the funeral of Pol.-Lt. Maung Tint in Mandalay on Sept. 3, 2013.
Prominent Economist Dr. Khin Maung Kyi Dies
Myanmar national Naw Kham, convicted of murdering 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in 2011, leaves the detention center for execution in Kunming, Yunnan Province on March 1, 2013.
Police in Myanmar said they found more than US $1.3 million worth of methamphetamine tablets buried by the late drug kingpin Naw Kham near the country’s border with Thailand. State media reported on Sept. 1 that a blue container with 650,000 stimulant tablets inside had been unearthed by heavy rain in Tachilek, Shan State. A police review later concluded that it had been buried a year and a half ago
Myanmar’s government said it would work together with authorities in Malaysia to arrange for the repatriation of hundreds of Myanmar migrant workers who were rounded up during an ongoing crackdown by Malaysian authorities. “The Myanmar embassy will check the identity of those who have been detained. Then, if it’s found that they are citizens of Myanmar, they will be sent back to the country,” U Ye Htut, the President’s Office’s spokesperson, told The Irrawaddy. Malaysian authorities began a crackdown in late August targeting around 400,000 foreign-
Mandalay Policeman Shot Dead by Fellow Officer
A policeman in Mandalay is dead after being shot by a fellow officer following an argument on Sept. 2. Pol.-Lt. Maung Tint was on duty at a Mandalay Region police station when 2nd-Lt. Thein Than Soe shot him in the head with his service weapon, killing him instantly. The incident allegedly occurred after Pol.-Lt. Maung Tint asked his subordinate earlier in the day where he had been while on duty. “Thein Than Soe just came in later that evening and then shot his superior, who was sitting down after finishing some writing. They are both calm people. I don’t know exactly how the argument started,”
Highly respected Myanmar economist Dr. Khin Maung Kyi died in Singapore on Sept. 6 at the age of 87. As an advisor to the country’s former military junta, he was often critical of the ruling generals’ approach to developing the economy. In an interview with The Irrawaddy in 2003, he said the generals sought to “to attach their name as shared partners to any enterprise that has potential for profit,” but offered nothing in return. “Rather than being able to save and reinvest their profits, enterprises have to give shares to the most unproductive force of the country—the generals,” he said. A graduate of Yangon University, Dr. Khin Maung Kyi later completed a Master’s degree at Harvard and a Ph.D. at Cornell University in the United States.
More than 500 civil society organizations have denounced a proposed law that they say will discourage ordinary citizens from supporting their activities. The groups said that they plan to send letters to the Lower House of Parliament and foreign embassies to raise their concerns about the draft Association Law, which imposes fines and prison
sentences on members of unregistered organizations. A member of one prominent group, the Free Funeral Service Society, said that after the draft law was published in daily newspapers on Aug. 27, many young people stopped volunteering. However, some legislators defended the law, saying it was needed during the current transition period.
Myanmar’s governmentappointed body for overseeing Buddhist affairs has declared a ban on the monkled nationalist movement known as “969”, which has been accused of fomenting religious intolerance against Muslims. The State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee issued a directive stating that it is illegal to form monks’ networks organized around the principles of the 969 movement and bars linking the 969 emblem
to the Buddhist religion. Meanwhile, U Wirathu, a prominent figure in the 969 movement, met with Muslim leader Diamond Shew Kyi in Yangon’s East Dagon Township on Sept. 10 and called for increased security at mosques and monasteries in the wake of a wave of communal violence over the past 15 months.
bank accounts in Singapore. The figure was first mentioned by Jelson Garcia, the Asia Program Manager with the Washington-based Banking Information Center. Mr. Garcia told The Irrawaddy that officials from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank believed the money was being held in “three to five accounts,” but could provide no further details. In a Facebook post, Deputy Minister of Information U Ye Htut rejected the claims. “The government doesn’t stash away the national budget in foreign banks. Give us the evidence regarding the $11 billion in five accounts. The government is ready to take action on it,” he said.
cording to a member of the party’s Central Executive Committee. U Nyan Win said the disappearance of sales revenues from tens of thousands of distributed copies of the newsletter had left the publication in debt. “We are now looking at some responsible people at D Wave in connection with this debt issue,” he told The Irrawaddy. The weekly newsletter first appeared on Jan. 16, 2012, when it went on sale for about $0.30. It has since become very popular with the public, with some media experts estimating it has a weekly circulation of more than 100,000 copies.
Myanmar’s government has denied reports that it holds up to US $11 billion worth of foreign reserves in several
D Wave, the widely read newsletter of the National League for Democracy, has run into financial problems after US $185,000 went missing from its books, ac-
Myanmar opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi risked Chinese anger after meeting with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on the sidelines of a human rights conference in Prague. The two Nobel Peace Prize laureates, who previously met in London last year, were both speakers at the Forum 2000 Conference, inaugurated in 1997 by the late Czech President Vaclav Havel. Two days after the meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama urged Buddhist monks in Myanmar to recall their faith before acting in anger against Muslims. “I am sure…that would protect those Muslim brothers and sisters
Prague, Czech Republic, on Sept. 15, 2013.
who are becoming victims,” he said. Beijing regards the Dalai Lama as a Tibetan
separatist, and strongly opposes his meetings with foreign dignitaries.
Leading members of the 88 Generation Students group met with President U Thein Sein for the first time on Sept. 15, in the latest effort by both sides to end decades of distrust between pro-democracy forces and newly civilianized members of Myanmar’s former military junta. In a monthly radio address delivered two weeks earlier, the president said that the public commemoration in August of the 25th anniversary of the “four eights” uprising against military rule showed that “we are moving toward a new political culture where those who ‘agree to disagree’ can still work together.” The radio address came a day after U Thein Sein met with opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
PHOTO: OFFICE OF HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA
PHOTO: PRESIDENT’S OFFICE
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and Myanmar opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi pose for a photo during their meeting in
The monk U Wimala Biwuntha shows a 969 logo during a speech at a monastery in Yangon on April 22, 2013.
President U Thein Sein, center left, stands with 88 Generation Students leaders, including Min Ko Naing, center right, in Naypyitaw on Sept. 15, 2013.
As the sun sets on another day in Yangon, passengers board a ferry at the tranquil riverside. Yangon has four main passenger jetties. Longdistance ferries ply the waterways north along the Ayeyarwady River to Pyay, Bagan and Mandalay and towards Pathein and other locations on the Ayeyarwady Delta.
PHOTO: HSENG NOUNG
We live in an age of “cautious optimism,” when no one can say with any certainty what the future holds for Myanmar, but many believe that it will, in any case, be better than what we’ve had to live through in the notso-distant past.
That caution may well be justified, but perhaps it’s time to start focusing on the need for greater optimism. This is not to deny that many daunting challenges lie ahead. At the same time, however, we can’t afford to become so wary of them that we lose sight of the equally enormous opportunities for positive change.
By AUNG ZAWAs a journalist who has spent more than two decades in exile, I speak from experience when I say that Myanmar is in many respects a very different country from the one I and many others once felt forced to flee. Many who once denounced the former regime are now returning, eager to assist the ailing nation through participation in the peace process and by sharing their experiences with the opposition, civil society, media and the government.
Internationally, Myanmar is now seen as an exciting new frontier for investors and tourists alike. Foreign leaders fly in to meet President U Thein Sein and Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and journalists from around the world are closely following developments here to meet growing demand for information about a nation that until recently was regarded as a pariah.
There are many reasons for this sudden burst of intense interest. One is that Myanmar’s natural resources are still relatively untapped, and thus extremely attractive to its more developed neighbors and other richer countries. Another is that it is strategically located between the world’s two most populous countries, and is also at the crossroads to Southeast Asia, one of the world’s most economically dynamic regions.
With the steady lifting of Western sanctions as the government moves forward (however haltingly) with reforms, there is hope that Myanmar
The greatest “capacity gap” Myanmar faces is at the top, where so far no one has articulated a clear plan for moving the country forward
will have even greater opportunities to develop its economy, not only in the resource sector, but also in areas that will give ordinary people jobs and a chance to develop new skills.
The trouble here, of course, is that Myanmar has a huge capacity gap, which will not be easy to close. But even this should not be a cause for undue pessimism: Even during the darkest days of military rule, when students were treated like criminals and universities were routinely shut down, Myanmar’s people demonstrated a strong appetite for knowledge and a willingness to do anything in their power to improve their minds and abilities.
Many foreigners, for instance, have remarked on the language skills of children hawking postcards to tourists. In order to eke out a meager existence, some will learn not just the rudiments of English, but also of any other language that might help them find new customers. This is no mean feat for children so poor that they have to spend their days earning a living rather than learning in school.
In other areas, too, the people of this country have shown themselves to be more than capable of acquiring whatever skills they need to survive. Until recently, for example, most motorists were forced to rely on vehicles long since abandoned by their original owners in other countries—something that would have been impossible without the resourcefulness of Myanmar’s mechanics.
In the public sphere, despite repression by the authorities, civil society organizations sought their own solutions to Myanmar’s pressing social problems, often with little or no help from outside aid agencies. What they
may have lacked in “capacity,” they more than made up for in their sheer determination to make a difference.
Myanmar’s intellectuals—its scholars, artists and writers—also showed that they could be stubbornly independent, even in the face of draconian thought control. Now that
all: the lack of leaders with a vision of the future.
To me, Myanmar is like a dilapidated old house. Neglect has taken its toll, but it’s still possible to imagine it in its former glory. All it would take to restore it is someone with a clear idea of how to get the job done, and the ability to communicate that idea to others.
Myanmar has never had any shortage of leaders, but somehow this has never translated into the sort of leadership the country really needs. The military strongmen who once ruled (and who remain in positions of power today) often seemed driven by paranoia and delusions of grandeur, rather than by an understanding of the needs of a nation with many ethnic, political, social and religious divisions.
Even deeply popular leaders, such as Gen Aung San and his daughter, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, are better known for what they opposed than for what they hoped to achieve. In the case of Gen Aung San, this is because his life was cut short before his dream of independence could be fully realized. In his daughter’s case, many have been disappointed by what they see as her inexplicable silence on many pressing issues.
they are no longer forced to work in the shadows, the world is discovering a vibrant culture that went almost completely unnoticed just a few years ago.
Of course, it will take more than the efforts of individuals, small groups and even whole communities to move Myanmar beyond the level of mere subsistence. To realize its full potential, the country needs the involvement of all of its citizens; and for that, it has to address the greatest capacity gap of
It’s not too late to hope that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or some other leader who emerged from Myanmar’s pro-democracy struggle— or even one of the more enlightened ex-generals—will someday be able to articulate a compelling vision of the country’s future. But the sooner that day comes, the better—before the optimism that’s in the air is squandered, and Myanmar loses yet another golden opportunity to rebuild itself anew.
Aung Zaw is the founding editor-inchief of The Irrawaddy.One doesn’t have to look far to discover that the North Koreans have arrived in Yangon. The Pyongyang Koryo restaurant on Saya San Road in Bahan Township is part of a chain of North Korean eateries in the region that earn badly needed foreign exchange for the cash-strapped government in Pyongyang. There are similar restaurants in various Chinese cities, in Vientiane in Laos, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia, and, until recently, in Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand.
But there is a more sinister side to North Korea’s presence in Myanmar than just serving hot pots, cold noodles and kimchi. For more than a decade, North Korea has been an important supplier of military hardware to Myanmar. North Korean tunneling experts have also helped the Myanmar authorities build bunkers and other underground facilities.
Years of quiet military cooperation between Myanmar and North Korea were formalized in November 2008, when Gen. Thura Shwe Mann, then number three in the military hierarchy and now the speaker of the Union Parliament, paid a secret visit to Pyongyang and signed a memorandum of understanding with Gen. Kim Kyoksik, the chief of the North Korean military.
It is that agreement—and North Korea’s general relationship with Myanmar—that made the United States change its Myanmar policy from one of isolation, condemnation and sanctions to one of engagement and promises of all kinds support in civilian as well as military fields.
While containing China may be
the longer-term objective of the new US approach to Myanmar, its more immediate goal is to prevent North Korea from forging strong ties with an ally strategically located at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia. After years of treating Myanmar as a pariah state, Washington decided it was time to act and moved to improve its relations with the country soon after President U Thein Sein assumed office in March 2011.
But even so, cooperation between Myanmar and North Korea has continued, which became obvious on July 2 of this year, when Lt-Gen Thein Htay, the head of Myanmar’s Directorate of Defense Industries, was blacklisted by the US Department of the Treasury because he “is involved in the illicit trade of North Korean arms.”
The statement curiously went on to state that the sanction did not target the government of Myanmar, which it said “has continued to take positive steps in severing its military ties with North Korea.” Any sensible observer would argue it would have been impossible for him to have acted independently over such a highly sensitive matter. Policymakers in Washington no doubt understand this, but wanted to send a strong signal to the Myanmar government that they are aware of the continued cooperation without directly confronting the president.
In April 2007, North Korea and Myanmar reestablished diplomatic relations which had been cut in October 1983, when North Korean agents detonated a powerful bomb in the then capital Yangon that killed 21 people,
including 17 visiting South Korean government officials. But until then, relations had been quite friendly, so the resumption of ties in 2007 was not really unexpected.
Both North and South Korea maintained unofficial “consulates” in Yangon as long as U Nu was prime minister. Following the 1962 military takeover, formal relations were established with both Koreas, but Yangon’s relations with Pyongyang tended to be warmer than those with Seoul.
In 1966, the official News Agency Burma signed an agreement with Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, which was permitted to employ a Myanmar citizen as its correspondent in Yangon. In 1977, military strongman Gen. Ne Win paid an official visit to Pyongyang, and North Korea became the first communist-ruled country to establish fraternal links with the Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP), at the time Myanmar’s only legally permitted political party. Subsequently, in 1980, a BSPP delegation attended the 6th Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party
As long as both sides have something to gain from the relationship, Naypyitaw and Pyongyang aren’t likely to cut ties just to please the West
in Pyongyang.
Under an economic agreement negotiated during Gen. Ne Win’s 1977 visit, North Korea helped Myanmar to build and operate a tin smelter, a glassmanufacturing plant, a hydroelectric plant and a synthetic textiles plant. North Korea also provided Myanmar with industrial products, including machinery, tools, cement and chemicals. In return, Myanmar exported cotton, rubber, wood, rice and minerals to North Korea. But there is no evidence of arms transfers during this time.
Myanmar’s eagerness to maintain cordial relations with North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s may have been prompted by Pyongyang’s then policy to support revolutionary movements all over the world. Myanmar was at that time facing a serious communist insurgency—and it did not want to have North Korea as an enemy. Only China, never North Korea, supplied the Communist Party of Burma with weapons and provided other support.
Ironically, the 1983 Yangon bombing became the catalyst for military cooperation between Pyongyang and Myanmar. One North Korean agent had been killed in a shootout with Myanmar’s security forces shortly after the bombing. But two were captured alive. Both of them were sentenced to death but only one, Maj. Zin Mo, was hanged. The third demolitions expert, Capt. Kang Min-chul, decided to cooperate with the investigation, and his life was spared.
For over a decade, there were no exchanges of any kind between the two countries, but a thaw in relations took part in the mid-1990s. North Korea’s then ambassador in Bangkok, Ri Dosop, had been instructed by Pyongyang to contact his Myanmar counterpart to negotiate the repatriation of Capt. Kang, who was wanted for high treason in North Korea. However, Kang was never extradited. He remained in Insein Jail where he reportedly died of liver cancer in May 2008.
But the two then pariah countries found each other during those secret talks in Bangkok. Both countries had
Myanmar’s then foreign minister, U Nyan Win (second from right), visits the Tower of the Juche Idea during an official visit to Pyongyang on Oct. 29, 2008. The following month, then Gen. Thura Shwe Mann—a top-ranking member of Myanmar’s former junta, and currently speaker of the Union Parliament—made a secret visit to cement military ties between the two countries.
difficulty trading openly through international monetary institutions because of sanctions imposed by the West—while Myanmar wanted to obtain more modern, heavy weapons, North Korea needed food. In what appears to be a barter agreement, North Korean freighters carried military equipment to Thilawa and Yangon ports, and returned with tons of Myanmar rice. North Korean shipments to Myanmar have included artillery, multiple launch rocket systems vehicles and, most probably, missile technology.
Now, the situation has changed dramatically, at least for Myanmar, but the trade is continuing.
“The Chinese would never sell sophisticated machinery or equipment and Russian smugglers are too cunning. In these circumstances, North Korea is still Myanmar’s most reliable supplier,” said one Myanmar military source, explaining why Naypyitaw and Pyongyang seem intent on maintaining their relationship.
Indeed, given the years of hostility with the West, it would be surprising if Myanmar decided to throw in its lot exclusively with the United States and totally sever ties with an old ally like North Korea. Myanmar has always maintained a balance in its relations with outside powers—and relations with North Korea could also be a useful bargaining chip when Naypyitaw wants more concessions from the United States.
So for the foreseeable future, kimchi is not likely to be the only thing that North Korea exports to Myanmar.
Bertil Lintner is a journalist and author of numerous books on Myanmar and Asia, including “Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea under the Kim Clan”.
By SAW YAN NAING / NAYPYITAW
In a new 30,000-seat football stadium here in Naypyitaw, Myanmar athletes warm up and begin exercising in the early morning hours, to prepare for the upcoming 27th Southeast Asian Games.
The athletes have been busy training every day to get ready for the biennial regional sports competition scheduled in December. This year’s SEA Games will be the first to be hosted by Myanmar in four decades.
At the Wanna Theikdi Stadium, Ma Kay Khine Lwin, a track and field athlete who will compete in the 100-, 200- and perhaps 400-meter races, cools down after her workout. “I want gold medals,” the 35-year-old says. “So I’m preparing to be the best. But
the competition will be tough, as my competitors from Vietnam and Thailand are well-trained.”
But being the host country will have advantages, she adds. “We have a better chance than our competitors to win,” she says. “It is our home and our people will cheer for us.”
Ma Kay Khine Lwin has won several medals, including gold, in past SEA Games in Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos and Indonesia. But she says she worries about the prospects for Myanmar competitors as they lack access to experienced and knowledgeable trainers, who can guide them to success in regional competitions.
Myanmar previously hosted the
SEA Games in 1961 and 1969, both times in Yangon, which was then the country’s capital. The last event was organized seven years after a military coup ushered in a decades-long dictatorship under Gen Ne Win and his successors.
Myanmar subsequently skipped its turn to host the SEA Games several times due to its international isolation during military rule. With the start of reforms in the past two years under President U Thein Sein’s nominally civilian government, however,
Myanmar has found international acceptance and is finally able to host the regional competition again.
The 27th Sea Games, which will start on Dec. 11, will feature 35 different sporting events. The opening and closing ceremonies, and most competitions,
Clockwise, from left, previous page: Two vendors walk past the Wunna Theikdi Stadium in Naypyitaw, where the games will open. An athlete practices inside the stadium. Police stand guard outside, while workers make finishing touches to a pitch, work on landcaping and a swimming pool, and clean the stadium seats.
“WE HAVE A BETTER CHANCE THAN OUR COMPETITORS TO WIN. IT’S OUR HOME AND OUR PEOPLE WILL CHEER FOR US.”
—Myanmar athlete Ma Kay Khine Lwin
will be held in the capital Naypyitaw. A number of events, including wrestling, hockey, weightlifting and some football games, will be held in Yangon and Mandalay. Ngwe Saung Beach will host a sailing competition.
Naypyitaw was built—at great expense and with the help of crony construction companies—by the former military regime, which moved the seat of government there in 2005. The upcoming SEA Games have provided authorities with an opportunity to go on another building spree in the young capital.
In the past year, construction firms have erected the massive Wunna Theikdi Stadium, which includes a swimming pool and an indoor stadium, the Zeyar Thiri Football Stadium, and a range of other sports facilities, such as an outdoor cycling track, an equestrian field and the Royal Myanmar Golf Course.
The Games’ opening and closing ceremonies will be held at Wunna Theikdi Stadium, the country’s largest. It was built by the Max Myanmar Group owned by Myanmar tycoon U Zaw Zaw, whose firm also built the Zeyar Thiri Stadium and Mandalay’s Thiri Football Stadium for the December events.
U Khin Maung Kywe, Max Myanmar Group’s construction director, said he was proud of the new Wunna Theikdi Stadium, which he said meets international standards with 30,000 seats, 500 VIP seats and CCTV cameras.
He said the SEA Games would promote a positive image of Myanmar’s culture, traditions and natural beauty, and would provide a boost for the economy and tourism.
“In the past, we did not have good infrastructure or good stadiums for sports,” he says. “Now we have good stadiums and players can practice well. Even after the SEA Games, Myanmar athletes can gain experience and keep practicing [at the facilities]. I hope Myanmar will produce more good athletes.”
The idea to organize the SEA Games came in May 1958, with an aim to promote friendship among Southeast Asian nations. Thailand was the first country to host the Games.
Myanmar has chosen the slogan “Green, Clean and Friendship” for this year’s event. But the country has tested its friendship with other competing nations after it allegedly cherry-picked sports that it plays best in order to improve its chances of obtaining medals.
“It’s ridiculous—whatever sports they want in, they get, and the ones they’ve chosen carry too many medals,” Charoen Wattanasin of Thailand’s Olympic Committee told Reuters in a reaction in February.
Myanmar organizers dropped popular regional sports such as tennis, beach volleyball and gymnastics, and included lesser-known
“Sports are supposed to build better friendships.”
—U Aung Din, advisor to the Ministry of Sports
traditional sports such kempo and vovinam (two martial arts forms popular in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) and chinlone. The latter is a traditional Myanmar version of cane ball that is unknown elsewhere in the region.
At Wunna Theikdi Indoor Stadium, U Aung Din, an advisor to the Ministry of Sports and Myanmar’s National Olympic Committee, watched a group of karate athletes train. “Myanmar’s athletics are now in the international spotlight,” he says. “It’s the highest stage we have ever had.”
However, he was concerned about a supposed tendency among some Myanmar athletes and fans to react aggressively to disappointment, especially during football games.
“Sports are supposed to build better friendships and close relations between players. But some have the mindset that they need to win. It’s a one-sided desire. It’s our people’s weakness. It also harms the image of the government and leaders,” he says.
“Some fans get angry, shouting and becoming violent when their team loses. They break things in the stadium. We need to have the mindset of gentlemen.”
Left: The Wunna Theikdi Stadium in Naypyitaw. Below: Myanmar athletes in training for the games
By THIERRY FALISE
Myanmar’s most feared ethnic armed group gains new strength, but for ordinary Wa, life remains as difficult as ever
It was a scorching June afternoon in 2010 when I had my most recent encounter with the Wa.
I was walking down through a valley with a team from a relief group that was supplying basic medical care to villages in an area controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA), in the so-called “southern Wa State,” near the Thai border. We came across a large group of young Wa soldiers who were attending an open-air school in a field.
“Who are you?” asked some of the adult members of the group. “No photos!” insisted others, who obviously had not been informed of our presence.
Many questions and a few tense moments later, however, everyone relaxed. Cigarettes and sweets were traded, and one man in his thirties— evidently the most senior UWSA leader there—started to jokingly compare his handgun with that of our escort leader.
We conversed in a mixture of Wa, Thai, Lahu and Chinese—everything except Myanmar. The Wa commander had fine, pale features, suggesting that he was ethnic Chinese, whereas his subordinates and the young cadets had the stockier build and darker skin typical of the Wa.
Although we all ended up smiling and shaking hands, we knew that
Left: UWSA soldiers display a human skull, a rare remnant of the days when the Wa were regarded as fierce headhunters. Below: Location of Wa State is shown on map.
THAILAND
SHAN STATE Naypyitaw Yangon
WA STATE
CHINA INDIA
we had seen too much. After all, we were in the heart of the fiefdom run by Wei Hsueh-kang, a Chinese-born UWSA commander who, along with several others, was indicted by the US government in 2003 as a major drug lord. Our request to continue our trip was rejected, for “security reasons.”
This incursion into Wa territory was nevertheless very enlightening. It came nearly two decades after my first visit to a UWSA-controlled area in 1992, when I ventured just across the Thai border to a place where the group was controlling vast poppy fields. In the years that followed, there would be half a dozen trips in all, including a 35-day expedition on foot and by mule in 1993 from the Thai border to Pangsang, the UWSA’s capital on the Chinese border.
Returning so many years later, what struck me most was that it looked like hardly anything had changed. Sure,
construction in 1999, when I traveled to Wei Hsueh-kang’s then headquarters of Maung Yawn, near the Thai border. At the time, they were displayed by the Wa leaders as pieces of a grand development plan for their subjects.
What I found instead of evidence of development was an abundance of signs that large-scale narcotics production was still in full swing, contrary to claims from the UWSA leadership that it was working to eliminate the local drug industry. Vast patches of dry poppy fields could be seen all over the hills from ridges along the Thai border. Inside sources confirmed that, besides the well-documented methamphetamine factories, the Wa were still running heroin labs.
This reminded me of another trip into UWSA-controlled territory that I made in 2003: Traveling in the company of soldiers from the Shan
there were no more human skulls on display from the not-so-distant days of head hunting still so dear to old leaders. But the people—mostly farmers and the families of soldiers—were still as destitute as when they were first moved from the northern Wa territory to the southeast in the mid-1990s.
I wondered what had become of the dams, roads and other infrastructure— including a gas station built by a Thai politician—that I saw under
State Army—South, I came across a group of Chinese workers busy building a refinery on the bank of a river.
But the UWSA is far from being the only major player in the narcotics business. As one Shan source once put it: “From the moment you start doing business in eastern Shan State— whether you’re from an ethnic armed group, a local militia or the Burmese army—you are involved, in one way or another, in the drug trade.”
The UWSA conscripts children as young as 11, but doesn’t allow them to fight until they turn 16. These children belong to UWSA Division 171, based in the so-called Southern Wa State, near Myanmar’s border with Thailand, in an area controlled by Chinese Wa drug lord Wei Hsueh Kang.And this is the way it’s been for ages. Long before the UWSA came into existence, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of Burma used narcotics to finance their causes.
My previous trips in Pangsang were possible only because I was invited by a faction of UWSA leaders who were actually trying to help end the drug trade, which had long stigmatized their people. They believed they could get rid of this business and win access to development aid and support from the outside world.
They were certainly true patriots, but they were also too naïve about the cynical drug industry and the local political chess game. They were all neutralized, sometimes in brutal ways: While one retired to a pastoral life of growing tea and apples in the north, another was gunned down in a Chiang Mai street.
Today, such internal divisions are not the only problem facing the Wa. Increasingly, the UWSA is coming under heavy Chinese influence, as the Myanmar government turns to the West to rebalance its relationship with Beijing. With its 20,000 to 30,000 welltrained and well-equipped soldiers, the UWSA gives China powerful leverage along Myanmar’s northern border.
There have been recent reports that China has provided the UWSA with armored vehicles and helicopter gunships—a first for an ethnic armed group in Myanmar. While this may be a boon for the UWSA, it is less clear how it will benefit the Wa people.
Perhaps I can ask them the next time I visit—if I’m invited.
A hill-tribe villager smokes opium in Shan State in 1993. UWSA soldiers wade across a river with their horses and mules while out on an expedition.Frequent accidents and fatalities have given the road between Yangon and Naypyitaw a fearsome reputation
By NYEIN NYEIN / YANGON
In 2005, Myanmar’s junta ordered its military engineers to quickly build a new road that would connect Yangon with Mandalay and the country’s brand new capital Naypyitaw, and in 2011 the 366-mile road was completed.
But few funds were invested in safety measures and engineers admit the project was a rush job. As Myanmar’s roads become busier and more dangerous, the new road has emerged as the country’s foremost “death highway,” with at least 432 crashes resulting in 216 deaths and 678 injuries between March 2009 and April 2013, according to data from the Highway Police.
In the first seven months of this year alone, there have been 146 fatal accidents, involving 84 deaths, the official figures show. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as many motorists manage to avoid becoming deadly statistics by narrowly escaping lifethreatening accidents.
In July, the highway claimed one of its most famous victims when wellknown singer Soe Tay’s car punctured a tire, skidded off the road and plunged five meters into a gully near Meikhtila Township. The singer’s 22-year-old girlfriend Ma Chaw Chaw died on the spot, but he survived with severe head injuries.
Highway Police Col Nay Win said the fatal accident was one of many tragedies that are taking place on the highway. “We have to deal with several accident cases every day,” he said.
The high number of crashes along the Yangon-Naypyitaw-Mandalay highway is indicative of a growing national road-safety crisis. As the country’s road network expands and the number of cars plying its roads increases, so have the number of traffic deaths and injuries.
In 2012, there were 9,339 traffic accidents leading to 15,720 injuries and 2,653 deaths nationwide, according to government figures supplied to the World Health Organization. The numbers represent an almost 100 percent increase in fatalities in Myanmar since 2005, when 1,331 people were killed in traffic accidents across the country.
The number of traffic accidents is expected to rise even faster in coming years after the government lifted car import restrictions in October 2011, leading to a surge in car sales in the country.
Currently, the number of traffic deaths in Myanmar stands at 15 per 100,000 people, compared to 38 per 100,000 in Thailand. But the relatively low figure for Myanmar is hardly a sign of better road safety, as Thailand has 16 times more cars than its much poorer neighbor, according to recent auto market research carried out by Deutsche Bank.
And while the situation is alarming everywhere in Myanmar, the rate of deadly accidents on the highway linking the country’s three most important cities is especially worrisome, as it reflects the shoddiness of much that
has been built since a frantic burst of construction began about a decade ago.
The former military regime prioritized rapid development of a new highway between Myanmar’s major cities after it began its construction of the new capital Naypyitaw. Located in central Myanmar between Yangon and Mandalay, Naypyitaw was completed in 2005.
Using forced labor and working at a demanding pace set by their superiors, military engineers built the Yangon to Naypyitaw stretch between October 2005 and March 2009 and the section from Naypyitaw to Mandalay between July 2008 and December 2011.
The project was plagued by accusations of corruption and a shortage of funds, and was built without
“The risk could be reduced if drivers follow safe-driving guidelines.”
—U Myo Myint, chief engineer of the Road Maintenance and Upgrading UnitAn overturned bus serves as a stark reminder of the dangers of travel on Myanmar’s longest highway
support from multilateral donors such as the Asian Development Bank, which funds high-quality road projects across the region.
Ministry of Construction engineers acknowledge that the finished product left much to be desired—and that road safety was a low priority.
Along the highway there are few warning signs or light reflectors to indicate a bend in the road, while many areas also lack protective railings. There are, however, a number of unconventional warning signs that carry messages such as “Life Is A Journey, Complete It” and “Drive With Care, Make Accidents Rare.”
“There are weaknesses,” U Kyi Zaw Myint, chief engineer of the Ministry of Construction’s Public Works Enterprise, acknowledged in an interview with The Irrawaddy.
“The road’s construction was not perfect. Its completion was rushed due to an inadequate timeframe,” said U Kyi Zaw Myint, who oversaw the highway’s construction. “This was done because of the immediate need to commute between Yangon and Naypyitaw, after the previous government moved there.”
Engineers say, however, that this means the public has extra responsibility to drive safely on the below-standard highway, adding that accidents are usually due to drivers’ carelessness, or because they were speeding or drunk-driving.
U Kyaw Lin, director of the Public Works Enterprise, agrees that a lack of safety consciousness is a major cause of the high death rate on Myanmar’s roads. “Myanmar needs to adopt the practice of people wearing seatbelts,” he said, adding that many deaths are caused by people who drive recklessly
and fail to fasten up.
U Myo Myint, the chief engineer of the Road Maintenance and Upgrading Unit under the Public Works Enterprise, also put the blame squarely on the shoulders of drivers, even as he acknowledged that the road was “incomplete.”
“The accidents happened to those who have less knowledge about the road. When something happened, they could not control their speed,” he said. “The risk could be reduced if drivers follow safe-driving guidelines.”
Some 5,000 passenger buses and cars drive on the road daily, according the Ministry of Construction. Heavier trucks transporting goods are only allowed to travel on the old YangonMandalay highway.
According to some drivers who use the road regularly, tire punctures caused by the road’s concrete surface are a leading cause of accidents. “The concrete road causes flat tires, especially on hotter days,” said U Aung Myint Kyaw, a taxi driver.
The engineers said they are taking some provisional measures to improve road safety. “Now, we are working to find a way to make it a safe road with less cost,” said U Myo Myint. “We are conducting a survey of the needs for repairs together with foreign specialists.”
Engineers said that the government hopes to attract international donor funding to upgrade the road and widen it to eight lanes in the coming years.
The US government announced during President U Thein Sein’s trip to Washington in May that it would allocate some donor funding to improve the Yangon-Naypyitaw-Mandalay highway.
Right here,” says U Aye Kyaw, pointing to the floor of his office in downtown Yangon, where two Scandinavian tourists had to sleep after they were unable to find proper accommodation.
That was last year, when a record one million foreign arrivals put unprecedented strain on Myanmar’s underdeveloped tourism infrastructure.
The upsurge then of visitors keen to experience the country’s largely unseen attractions came with an awkward spotlight on its lack of hotel rooms, dilapidated transport systems and even the quality of its food.
This year officials are hoping for 1.8 million visitors, and tourism services and infrastructure are still struggling to handle the potential windfall.
For some sectors, such as hotels, times have never been so good. “They are getting a golden egg every day,” says U Aye Kyaw of Rubyland Tourism Services in Yangon, referring to the high occupancy and steep room rates enjoyed by accommodation providers.
It’s better days for tour guides, too, as long as they don’t mind a grueling work schedule.
“I was on the job every single day from November to February last year,” said Yangon-based U Zaw Lynn, a 15year veteran in the high-end tourism business who expects to put in the same hectic hours this high season.
“I was like a zombie,” says 24-yearold freelancer Ko Aung Soe Lin, describing his condition after working
operators in Yangon are offering staff positions to star freelance performers, at around $1,500 a month. One of the country’s largest operators, Tour Mandalay, is also offering permanent contracts, according to product manager Marek Lenarcik.
Top guides in Myanmar are often, above all, skilled diplomats and problem solvers.
“When a car breaks down, or when a flight is delayed, when people get sick, or when there are issues of misinterpretation between tourists and locals—you have to know how to fix all these issues fast,” said U Zaw Lynn.
The guide shortage means companies are also considering hiring unaccredited persons who can offer special skills, such as languages.
a similarly frantic schedule last year as a first-time guide.
Daily rates for top guides have increased from around US $25 a couple of years ago to between $40 and $50 now, says U Zaw Lynn. In mid-September, the Myanmar Tour Guide Association proposed that guides should be paid at least $35 a day.
To hold on to guides, some tour
“There are people without the license but who are as good as the [accredited] guides. If they do have this kind of quality, and they do have these skills, I am happy to work with them,” says Ma Dar Le Khin, director of 7Days Travel & Tour, adding that the company had not yet made a final decision on such hires.
The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, which is responsible for accrediting tour guides, said it has added 184 certified guides since 2011, bringing the
Tourists stroll along the 1.2 km teak U-Bein footbridge at Amarapura, south of Mandalay city. PHOTO: STEVE TICKNER / THE IRRAWADDYA boy sells postcards near the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon.
total to 3,344 as of August.
Tour operators are also hiring other staff. At Unique Asia Ticketing and Tour, an original workforce of eight has increased to 30, according to executive director U Lynn Zaw Wai Mang. Tour Mandalay employs more than 150 people, of whom about a quarter were hired in the last two years.
The tourism industry may see its greatest moment—and its biggest challenge—in mid-December, when the Southeast Asian Games will be hosted by Myanmar at the same time that the tourism high season is peaking.
Thousands of athletes, training staff, government delegations and fans are expected to descend on Naypyitaw, Yangon, Mandalay and Ngwe Saung beach from Dec. 11-22 for the biannual competition.
The website Oway.com.mm has been working with the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism to offer online tour package booking for visitors to the Games.
Oway founder U Nay Aung was quick to spot the market potential of online bookings for everything from hotels and airlines to tour operators and car rental agencies.
“My goal is to take positions that have potential for very fast growth,” said the entrepreneur who spent 16 years overseas before returning to his home country in 2011. “The travel industry, in its current form, is very poorly served.”
The rise in online bookings from abroad may leave less room for
traditional operators, who can find themselves dealing with “leftovers” such as providing local transport, where fuel and driver costs mean there’s little room for profit.
“One operator told me he made between $100 and $200 total, providing local transport to a tour group,” said U Zaw Lynn. “He joked that it was better to be a guide than an owner—you’d make more money.”
Like the economy as a whole, the tourism industry is still largely catering to the high and low ends of the market, with limited space for those at the middle level.
High-end tourists can afford the top hotels, luxury private transport,
the most experienced guides and the best food. Backpackers arrive with few expectations by way of conditions.
The middle market—travelers who hope to pay reasonable prices for reasonable services—are still challenged on everything from room rates to reliable transport to what to eat.
“Food is still a big issue here,” said U Zaw Lynn, referring to quality, hygiene and price. “Small restaurant fare and street food is not comparable to, say, Thailand, where you can get a decent, healthy meal for as little as a dollar. Here, a basic meal will cost more than that. And your evening curry may have been cooked in the morning, or even the day before.
“It’s a bit of a worry for us, food. We recommend good restaurants that are known to us. But if clients want to try other places, we give them the full information on the situation.”
The biggest industry challenge this year is still room shortages. For U Aye Kyaw of Rubyland, this could be ameliorated relatively quickly if the government would allow homestays, which are technically illegal under current law—a situation that looks unlikely to change anytime soon.
High-end hotels in Yangon like Traders, the Park Royal and Chatrium have reconverted former hotel rooms that they had turned into office space when occupancy rates were low.
As other international hotel chains embark on new projects, just under a thousand new hotel rooms are expected to be ready by the end of the year,
“The travel industry, in its current form, is very poorly served.’’
—U Nay Aung, founder of travel website Oway.com.mmAbove: Finding the right accommodation is still often a challenge in Myanmar. Right: Fishermen ply Inle Lake, one of the country’s top destinations.
according to property firm Jones Lang Lasalle.
Nationwide, the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism says there are 859 licensed hotels and guest houses, offering more than 31,000 rooms. That is up from 731 licenses in 2011, with about 28,000 rooms.
Enterprising newcomers are also entering what for the moment is an attractive hotels market.
Ko Ye Min Thu, a 24-year-old Yangon resident, will this month open the 28-room hotel in Bagan, where last year some hapless tourists who couldn’t find rooms slept in local monasteries and even in cemetery grounds.
“I think I can help the tourism industry,” he said in September as hammers pounded and electric drills whirred at his unfolding hotel site.
One innovation set for this year is a 175-person strong tourist police force charged with servicing visitors
at tourism hotspots including Yangon, Mandalay and Bagan.
Mark Wilson, an American colonel with 40 years of law enforcement experience, most recently in training police in Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan,
has been enlisted by the Ministry of Home Affairs to train the force.
Part of the challenge, he says, is “demilitarizing” the cadets. “So now it’s a new day, a new Myanmar, and I’ve got the happy police. Instead of
A tourist from France lights a candle as an offering to Buddha at a festival at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. Stone carvings grace a temple in Mrauk-U, the former Rakhine capital and home to many ancient pagodas. PHOTO: REUTERS
the gray shirts with the very military-looking uniforms, we’re putting them in yellow polo shirts that say Tourist Police on the back, and telling them to smile and talk to people and wave.”
He added, “I’ve been training them more as Disneyland security guards than as police.”
By mid-September, the tourist police had their own Facebook page, but staff at the Pansodan Road head office in Yangon still appeared unready to deal with walk-in queries from foreign visitors. “It’s going to be an interesting season,” said Mr. Wilson, who also teaches basic “police English” to the officers three times a week. “With the influx of people for the SEA Games, and visitors coming to watch the games, and the regular tourists, it’s going to be a big season. A lot of challenges.”
Though annual tourist arrivals have risen steadily since 2011, and the strain has shown, there is little danger of Myanmar being overrun with visitors.
The numbers coming here are still tiny compared to the 22 million tourists that neighboring Thailand sees annually. Even Laos, with a population of 6.5 million, welcomed 3.4 million visitors last year.
But the government has big plans: 3 million annual foreign arrivals by 2015 and 7.5 million by 2020. The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism is planning to coordinate nearly $500 million in spending on the sector through 2020.
In turn, the ministry expects revenue from tourism-related services to rise from $534 million last year to more than $10 billion in 2020.
Slowly but steadily, linkages within and outside of Myanmar are being improved.
Domestic airline Air KBZ will deploy two more commercial planes starting this month, and hopes to put another on the tarmac before the end of
the year, nearly doubling the carrier’s fleet of four.
Myanmar Airlines International is also expanding links with regional destinations, while Thai carriers such as Nok Air and Bangkok Airways are introducing direct international flights to tourist destinations such as Mawlamyine and Mandalay, as well as to Naypyitaw.
In the east, four entry points on the border with Thailand were opened in late August to overland travel by foreigners for the first time.
Most of the 465,614 visitors entering Myanmar through land gateways last year were Thai citizens who stayed for less than one day. Foreigners entering the gateways with a visa can now stay for up to 28 days and travel onwards.
U Aye Kyaw, who is a board member of the Union of Myanmar Travel Association, said the UMTA will send representatives out to the region this year to provide tourism-related training.
“We are responsible, as an association, to train those people in how to handle the tourists,” he said.
Meanwhile, new and perhaps surprising players are readying to capture segments of the market.
In September, Saw Lah Lel, manager of a newly opened Moe Ko San Travel and Tour Company tour company owned by the Karen National Liberation Army’s 7th brigade, sounded an optimistic note to Karen News.
“When the gates are opened, foreigners will be able to go in and out of the country freely. The rate of visitors to [Myanmar] will increase dramatically,” the budding eentrepreneur told the publication.
Improving the experience of travel to previously inaccessible areas will take time, however, as 7Days Tour’s Ma Dar Le Khin can attest. During a mid-September attempt by a client to travel to Thailand via the Myawaddy crossing, impassable roads required that the traveler abandon the tour car and enlist a motorcycle to carry him the remaining many miles to the border.
Marcus Allender, a British national who came to Myanmar as a tourist in 2010 and returned last year as an entrepreneur to set up a tourismrelated website, journeyed in August to formerly off-limits parts of Tanintharyi Region.
“The railway down to Dawei, it’s scarcely believable, but it was built, according to Wikipedia, in 1998,” he said. “In fact, it would be bad by 1898 standards.”
But while the trip—which involved long hours atop a truck on poor roads— was at times dangerous, uncomfortable and energy-sapping, it was also “utterly fascinating”—for the landscape, the “sheer unfamiliarity” of everything and the welcoming Mon people.
Said Mr. Allender: “It was more than worth the effort.”
Myanmar’s domestic airlines face challenges in coming years as foreign players are expected to take a larger slice of the aviation market as the country opens up.
Alongside Myanmar Airways International (MAI)—which is majority owned by Kanbawza Bank chairman U Aung Ko Win, with the government holding a minority stake—and domestic counterpart Myanma Airways, there are six other domestic carriers.
Ownership of the domestic industry is concentrated in the hands of the wellconnected businesspeople who thrived under the country’s crony-favoring military junta.
U Aung Ko Win also owns Air KBZ and Golden Myanmar Airline is owned by KMA Group’s U Khin Maung Aye. Yangon Air has been linked to the United Wa State Army and is blacklisted by the US Treasury Department.
U Tay Za, chairman of Htoo Group, owns Air Bagan—which is also on the blacklist—and reportedly at some time held a stake in another local carrier, Asian Wings Airways. The sixth local airline, Air Mandalay, is a joint venture involving the government and Singapore and Malaysian companies.
Industry sources say these carries should prepare for disruption, since they are currently seen to be offering a service below the level of regional competitors. There are also safety concerns, with the possibility Air Bagan’s crash in Heho, Shan State, which killed two people in December, will turn tourists off local carriers.
Slicker regional carriers, which come with large networks linking farflung destination, will be given a boost by ambitious regional plans to open Southeast Asia’s aviation market.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is attempting to bring in an “Open Skies” policy in 2015, part of a broader plan to integrate the region’s economies.
Open Skies will mean Asean member states must open their airports to flights from regional airlines, giving local carriers less of an advantage.
Preparing for the increased competition of a liberalized aviation market, Asian Wings agreed in September to team up with All Nippon Airways (ANA), selling 49 percent of its shares to Japan’s largest airline for US $25 million.
“The thing we have to be cautious about is that international airlines could bring many passengers to all entry points [in Myanmar] in two years,” U Lwin Moe, the executive director of Asian Wings, told The Irrawaddy.
“We, domestic airlines, have a chance to bring more passengers. That is a benefit. But if such international
airlines operate on local routes, our domestic share could fall.”
Whether it turns out to be a positive or a negative development, the regional agreement was the key factor behind the ANA deal, U Lwin Moe said.
“[Asean Open Skies] is the main reason why we’re working with ANA,” he said.
Under the companies’ agreement, ANA will lease aircraft to Asian Wings and provide training to its pilots.
U Aye Mra Tha, an executive at MAI, said it was too early assess what impact the deal would have on the local aviation industry, since it was not clear whether ANA would codeshare with Asian Wings.
Codesharing allows airlines to sell tickets on each other’s flights, effectively combining their networks and the capacity of flights they can offer customers.
“We have to wait and see the exact law about this by the government. ANA has now just bought shares. It’s not a
codesharing agreement, so it’s too early to say how it will impact on the local sector,” U Aye Mra Tha said.
A bad omen for local carriers may be that Myanmar’s international flag carrier, MAI, has already been pushed off a route by a regional competitor. In March, Thai Airways began flights between Bangkok and Mandalay and just a month later, MAI ceased its flight between the two cities.
Bangkok Airways also announced in September it would begin flying between Mandalay and Bangkok— one of a number of new routes into Myanmar opened up by regional airlines that are taking advantage of soaring visitor numbers.
A manager at Columbus Travels & Tours said passengers will choose whichever airline offers the most convenient option. During the peak tourism season, between October and April, she said, local carriers are already struggling to offer enough flights to meet demand.
“During the peak season, there are about between 10 and 15 flights a day for an airline, depending on the number of passengers. But the problem is most of the airlines’ flights don’t arrive on time,” the manager said.
Local airlines would have to change their business practices to compete, she said.
“Some domestic airlines are now preparing to launch e-ticketing systems so passengers don’t need to get a paper ticket, making it more convenient for them. If some don’t upgrade their system, they will be left out of the game,” she said.
Frequent fliers already say domestic airlines’ flights are overpriced and buying tickets is inconvenient.
U Zin Min Swe, managing director of Mandalay-based construction and decoration firm C.A.D, said local airlines have to learn how to deliver a better service and offer customers more choice.
He said flying with Air Asia, for example, which has stopped a flight it used to run between Bangkok and Mandalay, contrasted with the experience of using a local carrier.
“The service is quite different. The check-in time is short [with Air Asia]. So they, local airlines, have to prepare to operate like this,” he said, adding that 24-hour booking and the option to book online, now expected of airlines, are not offered by all local carriers.
U Zin Min Swe also pointed out that flying between Yangon and Mandalay with a local carrier costs about the same—around $80—as flying from Yangon to Bangkok with regional carriers.
“The price [of domestic flights] shouldn’t be that much,” he said.
A senior official at state-owned Myanma Airways, who declined to be named, said if international airlines get into the local market, domestic airlines will be pushed out, since they will struggle during times of low demand.
In order to avoid this, the official said, carriers should try to take advantage of regional liberalization themselves, and fly routes out into the region.
“I would prefer the domestic airlines to attempt to fly regional routes,” he said.
Additional reporting by Yan PaiIn a world where modern banking services are almost universal, few things shout “economic backwater” quite like the absence of ATMs and credit cards.
These days, even Myanmar—which was for decades one of the world’s most economically isolated countries— has a handful of ATMs in major urban centers, providing the sort of convenience that most of the rest of the world takes for granted.
Credit cards, however, are still virtually unheard of here. Only a few major hotels and shops catering to foreign tourists will even consider accepting your Visa or MasterCard, much less cards issued by the Japan Credit Bureau (JCB) or China UnionPay—all of which got a green light to do business in Myanmar last October.
So why has plastic been so slow to make inroads as the payment method of choice in Myanmar? The main reason is that domestic financial institutions have yet to be authorized to issue cards to local consumers; and that, in turn, goes back to events that rattled the country’s Central Bank a decade ago, and continue to cause jitters even now.
In early 2003, Myanmar experienced its worst financial crisis in recent memory. When several so-called “micro-finance groups” offering high rates of interest to depositors abruptly collapsed, it set off a panic that hit not only the informal banking sector but also government-registered private banks.
Among the most prominent victims were Myanmar Mayflower Bank and Asia Wealth Bank. Although perhaps best known to foreign observers as the target of US sanctions for money laundering and ties to Myanmar’s former military junta, at the time they were regarded by customers inside the country as cutting-edge innovators, with services like ATMS, credit cards and online banking.
vice chairman of Yoma Bank, one of the survivors of the 2003 debacle.
“The failure of the credit-card system was all the fault of the banks. They trusted their customers too much and didn’t get enough detailed information from them. Spending got out of hand, and they weren’t able to keep track of it,” he explained.
Whatever the setbacks of the past, U Myat Thin Aung said he is keen to see credit cards become as much as part of life here as they are in neighboring countries.
“The Central Bank should allow local people to have credit cards, but it must be done in a way that minimizes risk,” he said, suggesting that making debit cards more widely available might be a good place to start until ordinary
which includes 14 of Myanmar’s 19 privately owned banks—is moving forward with plans (approved by the Central Bank) to work together with Japan’s JCB to expand its network of domestic debit-card users, who currently number around 200,000 nationwide, according to MPU figures.
According to AGD Bank’s U Ye Min Oo, cooperation with JCB to date has focused on enabling foreign JCB cardholders to use their cards in Myanmar; but the next step (due to be implemented in September) is to issue joint debit cards to Myanmar customers.
“For example, we may issue an AGD-JCB card,” he said, adding that China UnionPay has also started working toward a similar arrangement.
What they didn’t have, however, was the backing of the Central Bank. “Unlike Kanbawza Bank, which had a deal with the Central Bank to protect deposits, [Mayflower and Asia Wealth] were on their own,” recalled U Ye Min Oo, the managing director of Asia Green Development Bank (AGD).
According to U Ye Min Oo, whose bank was founded in 2010 by U Tay Za, another US-sanctioned crony of the former regime, the crash of 2003 has had a chilling effect on efforts to modernize Myanmar’s banks.
“The former government thought that it was credit cards that caused the crisis, when in fact it all happened because of the illegally operating microfinance groups,” he told The Irrawaddy in a recent interview.
But even if credit cards were not the undoing of two of Myanmar’s best-known banks, the crisis exposed weaknesses in the way the new service was introduced to the local market, according to U Myat Thin Aung, the
consumers prove themselves more creditworthy.
In any case, he said, there is an urgent need for Myanmar to move beyond its current cash-based transaction system.
“Nobody likes to carry around a lot of dirty banknotes, but until 10,000 kyat notes were introduced last year, that’s what I had to do when I wanted to treat business colleagues to dinner in restaurants,” he said.
Making it easier for consumers to make purchases would also help to stimulate demand, he added.
“As long as the banks can rein in their customers, more spending would encourage people to work harder to buy modern products,” said the Yoma Bank vice chairman, who is also the chairman of the Hlaing Tharyar Industrial Zone in Yangon.
Despite the Central Bank’s reluctance to give Myanmar consumers the convenience of credit cards, the Myanmar Payment Union (MPU)—
The move could dramatically increase the number of businesses that accept MPU debit cards, which are now recognized at just 700 locations around the country. (In contrast, JCB cards are accepted by merchants and at cash advance locations in 190 countries and territories.)
Taking the next step—issuing fullfledged credit cards—could have an even greater impact.
“I believe that if the Central Bank allows us to issue credit cards, the small and medium enterprises will definitely develop and business will also progress,” said U Ye Min Oo.
But with even savings accounts still restricted to just one withdrawal per week since 2003, it appears that the Central Bank prefers to err on the side of caution. Until this changes, the chances of Myanmar becoming a cashless society—even as other credit-card giants such as US-based American Express and Diners Club International are knocking on the door—appear dim.
“NOBODY LIKES TO CARRY A LOT OF DIRTY BANKNOTES, BUT UNTIL 10,000 KYAT NOTES WERE INTRODUCED LAST YEAR, THAT’S WHAT I HAD TO DO WHEN I WANTED TO TREAT COLLEAGUES TO DINNER.”PHOTO:
Questions have been asked in the European Parliament about the treatment of Myanmar workers in Thailand after charges of criminal defamation and damage were brought in a Bangkok court against a Myanmar-based human rights campaigner by the fruit juice processing company Natural Fruit.
The Switzerland-based giant produces such internationally recognized brands as Nescafe instant coffee, Kit Kat chocolate biscuits, and Maggi soups and sauces, as well as baby foods, numerous snack products, and breakfast cereals. It’s not clear yet which will be produced in Myanmar.
Major Japanese vehicle maker Nissan Motor Company is to open a factory in Myanmar to produce cars and small trucks, the Tokyo business newspaper Nikkei has reported.
Nissan plans to partner with Tan Chong Motor Holdings of Malaysia and an as yet unnamed Myanmar firm to build a small plant which will “produce several thousand small passenger cars and pick-up trucks a year,” said Nikkei.
The vehicles will be assembled from parts built in other Nissan factories in the region, including Thailand. The location of the factory and details of the investment were due to be announced during a visit to Myanmar by Nissan’s chief executive Carlos Ghosn.
It will be the second production start-up by a Japanese vehicle manufacturer. Earlier this year, the Suzuki Motor Corporation announced the re-opening of its Yangon factory to build pickup trucks. The factory, which had been closed since 2010, is initially producing 100 vehicles a month.
Japan’s Mazda Motor Corporation also announced in late September it will start selling new vehicles soon in Myanmar.
Chinese companies are keen to win contracts to help develop Myanmar’s transport infrastructure, Beijing’s ambassador Yang Houlan said.
“The Chinese government attached importance to Sino-Myanmar cooperation in the transport sector, supporting the strength of Chinese enterprises to actively participate in port development, dredging and
road and bridge construction,” the official news agency Xinhua quoted Mr. Yang as saying.
He made the proposal when he attended an official handover in Yangon harbor of 19 dredgers and supporting vessels supplied by the state-owned China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation, also known as CATIC Beijing.
The dredging equipment was supplied with the assistance of a preferential loan provided by the Chinese government, said Xinhua.
The charges were laid against British national Andy Hall in connection with a film he made documenting alleged abuse of hundreds of Myanmar workers at a Natural Fruit factory. He accused the company of a host of rights violations, including illegally hiring underage Myanmar workers, paying wages below the Thai national minimum, and confiscating workers’ passports. Natural Fruit has denied all allegations.
Mr. Hall’s film was commissioned by Finnwatch, a group concerned about imports into Finland of unethical produce.
In a Sept. 18 video now on YouTube, Finnwatch executive director Sonja Vartiala said: “The legal process [in Thailand] is a farce. Natural Fruit is suspected of serious human rights violations. It’s the company’s managers and not Andy Hall who should be facing the threat of a trial.”
Giant processed foods company Nestlé has established a subsidiary in Myanmar and will soon build a production factory in the country, according to the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA). The new subsidiary, Nestlé Myanmar, was formed on Sept. 16, said DICA.
Nestlé upgraded its representative office in Yangon last year in anticipation of an increase in sales in Myanmar. Although it maintained a presence in Myanmar even when international sanctions were in force, Nestlé has until now kept a low profile in the country.
The Bangladesh government is to award three offshore blocks in the Bay of Bengal this month to ConocoPhillips of the US and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Dhaka newspapers said.
The two firms were the only bidders for the blocks which were among 12 offered by the government in December 2012. No bids for the other nine blocks were received.
Under the terms of the concession agreement, the companies will be allowed to sell up to 50 percent of any production to third parties without reference to the state oil and gas firm Petrobangla, said The Star newspaper. ConocoPhillips will get block 7, while ONGC will take blocks 4 and 9, the paper said.
ONGC is a partner in the development of Myanmar’s Shwe gas field in the Bay of Bengal, where the two neighbors had a naval confrontation in 2008 before their joint sea border was finalized following UN arbitration.
— WILLIAM BOOTAnyone who is interested in Myanmar reads The Irrawaddy. Among our readership we count policy-makers, government officials and businessmen throughout the world.
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revolutionaries, such as the Maoists. An equally high-profile transgender figure, Bhumika Shrestha, has been sworn in to swell the ranks of the Nepali Congress, a first for the oldest political party in the country.
The list of LGBT candidates is expected to grow as the contestant lists are finalized. Already, over 60 LGBT contenders have declared their political intent through the BDS. These 28 lesbians, 21 gays and 12 transgenders are eying constituencies they are familiar with in 31 districts.
By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / KATHMANDUIn this capital city, ringed by hills, neighborhoods are marked by the weight of neglect. The office of the Blue Diamond Society (BDS), a group championing the cause of sexual minorities, is based in one crumbling setting. To get there, one journeys down a rocky road and a narrow winding lane, both of which are torn apart by potholes and muddy pools of water. It occupies an unremarkable, two-story building, set behind a rustcovered gate. Facing the BDS’s office is an open field littered with garbage.
Until the middle of this year, the only people familiar with such surroundings were the ones who regularly made the journey there— Nepal’s eclectic mix of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trangsgenders (LGBT). But not anymore. This everyday scene of Nepal’s city life has become the setting for a remarkable political turn in the Himalayan nation. The clues lie in the unusual attention the building that houses BDS is attracting.
The visitors dropping by to engage with the LGBT crowd are functionaries from the country’s major political parties. And it is not just to campaign for votes in the run-up to a planned election for the second Constituent Assembly (CA) on Nov. 19. More importantly, apparatchiks of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-
Leninist), or UML, are among those who have trooped there with a more progressive vision in mind: seeking prospective candidates to contest the polls. It marks the latest embrace by mainstream politics of an increasingly vocal and visible sexual minority constituency.
“A couple of dozen parties have shown interest in our members,” reveals Sunil Babu Pant, the head of the BDS, a day after he had met a UML delegation in his top-floor office. “This is certainly a big change for us, to be approached this way. They see us as a legitimate and influential group in national politics.”
Mr. Pant, who became Nepal’s first openly gay lawmaker in the first CA, has already joined the UML, one of the country’s larger establishment parties, which has more social democrat leanings than the gun-toting
“We have assured them that our election manifesto will accommodate their concerns, such as third-gender rights,” Pradeep Gyawali, a UML politburo member, told The Irrawaddy. “It is quite amazing that Nepal has made this progress about the thirdgender community. No political party thought this way 10 years ago; not even the society.”
Such a sea change is a remarkable achievement for three reasons. Nepal, after all, is a predominantly Hindu country known for its discriminating caste structure. Even now, it is common to hear of an upper-caste Brahmin refusing to shake hands with Dalits, members of a lower-caste group known as “the untouchables,” out fear of being “polluted.” Other extreme examples of such minority discrimination abound, like Dalits being forbidden to enter upper-caste houses from the front.
There has also been no religious backlash by social conservatives. Such a tolerant response stands out in South Asia, where waves of religious fundamentalism—Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic—are on the rise. In neighboring India, home to the world’s largest Hindu population, religious groups led the charge to challenge a court ruling to decriminalize homosexuality in 2010.
The other reason for cheer is political. The inroads made by the “third genders,” as the LGBT minority is called here, is a progressive step in a country that has been stuck midway in its plans for reform. The first CA was elected with the promise of drafting a new republican constitution. It followed a historic change in what was once the world’s only Hindu kingdom. The 240-year-old monarchy was abolished on May 28, 2008, at the inaugural session of the 601-member national assembly. That came on the tails of a groundbreaking peace
As the political landscape of Nepal changes, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders make unprecedented gains in the halls of power
agreement, which saw the end of a decade-long revolution spearheaded by the Maoists in which 16,000 people were killed and some 150,000 were displaced.
The leader of the Maoists, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known by his revolutionary name “Prachanda” (“the Fierce One”), is one of a string of Nepali leaders who have presided over five years of political paralysis. The customary bickering between and within Nepal’s political parties has resulted in a half-written constitution. The failure of the CA to meet its multiple deadlines paved the way for another attempt to elect a fresh body to the national assembly. The interim government running the country till the November polls is headed by Khil Raj Regmi, the chief justice.
Yet, for the likes of Mr. Pant, the messy and fractious political transition was fertile ground. His organization rode a wave of human rights activism for the marginalized that spread in post-revolutionary Nepal. Help
came from many quarters, the most influential of which was the Supreme Court. The latter ruled in a December 2007 case filed by BDS that the country needs to officially recognize thirdgender rights. The government that emerged soon after followed with a call for official documents to have a new category (in addition to male or female) where sexual classification needs to be indicated. Even a budget for these new rights was added to the state’s annual expenses.
The nearly 12 years of work by LGBT activists to reach this pivotal moment was also rewarded during the country’s 2011 census. The official government documents that recognize a thirdgender category are supposed to benefit some 500,000 LGBTs, according to government data, although BDS estimates place the figure closer to 2.5 million.
Some analysts who have followed Nepal’s rise as the most tolerant country for sexual minorities in South Asia attribute it to its demographic
profile—a population of over 26 million people divided into nearly 100 ethnic minorities and linguistic groups. So respecting another minority, albeit a newly recognized one, is acceptable within the social fabric, they say.
Others locate it in Nepal’s identity since the times of the monarchy. “This country has never had a record of being a theocratic state,” Krishna Hachhethu, a professor of political science at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, explained in an interview. “It was more secular even when it was a Hindu kingdom when compared to secular India.”
Either way, BDS is credited with awakening Nepalese to a community that has long suffered discrimination, some of it painful and humiliating. “We have more work to do to get people beyond the cities to accept third gender unions as natural,” admits Prem Bahadur Thapa, the nongovernmental organization’s lawyer. “It helps when a third gender person is legally recognized as a person.”
Sept. 13 should have been a joyous day for the Le Quoc family in Hanoi. But with prodemocracy campaigner Le Quoc Quan in jail since late 2012 on charges of tax evasion, the detained lawyer’s birthday made for a somber occasion.
The day came and went, and Le Quoc’s fate was still up in the air. “Noone knows when he will go to trial,” his brother Le Quoc Quyet told The Irrawaddy after a June hearing was suspended because it clashed with a visit to the US by Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang. It was not until a week after his birthday that the lawyer was given a new trial date, Oct. 2.
Meanwhile, in Cambodia, land rights activists Tep Vanny and Yorm Bopha have been or are in jail over protests about Boeung Kak, a landfilled lake in the heart of Phnom Penh near which the two women live. Some 3,500 families have been evicted from the lakeside to make way for offices and apartments to be built by a company owned by a senior lawmaker from Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).
This correspondent spoke to both women at the Phnom Penh prison where Yorm Bopha is halfway into a two-year jail sentence for assault— charges which sound as trumped-up as those against Le Quoc Quan.
Yorm Bopha protested on behalf of Tep Vanny when the latter was in jail. Now the favor is being returned, with Tep Vanny visiting Bopha in jail and protesting for her release. “We are like sisters now, we think the same and support each other,” Tep Vanny told The Irrawaddy in early September.
Stories like these—which could be told about dozens of activists in both countries—show how far these two latecomers to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) have yet to go to establish even the most basic standards of human rights. And they are not alone.
The two other countries that have joined Asean since 1995 are also showing little or no progress on rights reforms. Communist-ruled Laos, which entered the regional bloc in 1997 alongside Myanmar, is coming under increasing pressure over its suspected involvement in the disappearance of prominent activist Sombath Somphone. Sombath—a winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award (often called Asia’s Nobel Prize)—vanished without a trace last December.
Myanmar, a country that held free and fair by-elections last year, would at least seem to be doing better than Cambodia, where the ruling CPP is accused of cheating in a closely fought election in July. And possible plans to amend Myanmar’s draconian Internet laws stand in stark contrast to Vietnam’s recent retrograde steps to restrict social media users from posting news online.
But none of this means that the former black sheep of Asean is now a beacon. The cyber code hasn’t been changed yet, and there’s a draft law that reads like a government ploy to curb civil society.
Even Myanmar’s much-lauded release of political prisoners over the past two years is looking a lot less impressive these days, as a growing number of protesters opposed to land grabs land in prison—like Naw Ohn Hla, a regular protester against injustices under Myanmar’s former military government, who was summarily sentenced to two years with hard labor on Aug. 29 for demonstrating against the Letpadaung copper mine in Sagaing Region.
For now, then, Myanmar barely rises above being the best of a bad lot—not high praise for a country that has become Asean’s poster child of reform.
From the finest raw materials to innovative recipes, we transform local food into international cuisine.
Mention “Myanmar’s former capital” and most people will assume you’re talking about Yangon, the nation’s largest city and its seat of power until it was supplanted in that role by Naypyitaw in 2005. But actually, Myanmar has had many capitals over its long history, all of which make fascinating travel destinations for visitors looking for a glimpse into the country’s ancient past.
If you’re travelling to Mandalay, there are several you could visit— including Mandalay itself, which was Myanmar’s last royal capital until it fell to the British in November 1885. Founded in 1857 by King Mindon, it was preceded by Amarapura, which was established by another member of the Konbaung dynasty, King Bodawpaya, in 1783.
These days, urban sprawl has turned Amarapura—located just 11 km south of Mandalay—into part of Myanmar’s second largest city. But go another 10 km to the south and cross the Myitnge River, and you will find yet another erstwhile capital that still stands apart from the rest: Inwa.
Built in 1364 by King Thadominbya, who claimed descent from the Bagan kings whose mighty empire fell to the Mongols at the end of the 13th century, Inwa went on to serve as a center of power for successive dynasties until the early 19th century. Although it was not the capital for five unbroken
centuries, it did hold that honor for a total of nearly 360 years, until it was finally abandoned after a devastating earthquake in 1839.
These days, Inwa (or Ava, as it was known to the British), is a shadow of its former self, but it is still well worth a visit. Although it can be reached by car on the road from Mandalay International Airport within about one hour, most tourists prefer to take a three- to five-minute boat ride across the Myitnge, a tributary of the Ayeyarwady. Once there, they can admire the remains of the ancient city walls and the palace site and areas of unspoiled nature.
Under its royal patrons, religious learning once flourished in Inwa; so it comes as no surprise that one of its main attractions is the Maha Aungmye Bonzan monastery. Popularly known as the Me Nu Auk Kyaung, after Nanmadaw Me Nu, the chief queen of King Bagyidaw and de facto ruler of Myanmar after her husband became a recluse following his crushing defeat by the British in 1826, the monastery is adorned with fascinating stone sculptures from the 19th century.
Equally worthy of a visit is the Bagaya monastery, where members of the royal family went to study under the tutelage of Buddhist monks. Made of teak, the sculptures here are made of wood, but no less impressive.
Also high on the list of things to see is the early 19th-century watchtower—
all that remains of the palace that was once the beating heart of Myanmar power and culture. Unfortunately, for safety reasons, visitors are no longer permitted to climb to the top of this crumbling structure for a panoramic
It hasn’t been a seat of power for nearly two centuries, but Inwa still retains a touch of its past grandeur
ZARNI MANN / MANDALAY
view of the area.
The best way to see the sights of Inwa is by horse cart, which can behired for around 6,000 kyat for the day at the small jetty where visitors arrive from the other side of the river. Many have
been spruced up for the coming peak tourism season, and their owners say they give special care to their horses at this time of the year to ensure that they’re in top condition to welcome the expected influx of tourists.
Above: Maha Aungmye Bonzan monastery, popularly known as Me Nu Auk Kyaung, is a main attraction at the ancient city of Inwa. Previous page and immediate left: Carvings at the Bagaya teak wood monastery, which dates back to the 1700s.
Far left: Tourists often hire horse carts to see the sights of Inwa.
But as elsewhere in Myanmar, poor infrastructure is a problem. “The roads on the way to the watchtower and some parts of the road to Bagaya monastery are very rough, so we have to drive carefully,” says U Than Tun, a local horse-cart driver.
Tour operators in Yangon and Mandalay say the y re ce ive fe w complaints about the sorry state of the roads, but they add that they can easily arrange cars for elderly visitors or those with allergies to animals.
So if it’s “off the beaten track” you want, you’ll certainly find it here. But as tourists return to Myanmar in a big way after decades of isolation, don’t be surprised if this neglected gem comes back into its own as a prime destination for travelers looking for the royal road to the heart of Myanmar.
With its horse-drawn carriages and charming colonial-era architecture, Pyin Oo Lwin feels very much like a place with one foot planted firmly in the past. But even here, in this hill town some 70 km east of Mandalay that once served as the summer capital of Myanmar’s former British rulers, some remnants of the past don’t stand a chance against the forces of change.
While many foreign visitors are drawn to Myanmar precisely because it often feels like a land that time forgot, those who live here tend to be less sentimental about what they see as symbols of their “backwardness,” prompting some to jettison items that many a museum would covet.
“We have computers now; we don’t need this anymore,” says one Pyin Oo Lwin resident, referring to a vintage cast-iron printing press sitting on a street corner, apparently abandoned. Manufactured in 1855 by John G. Sherwin of London, it is identical to one now on display at a museum in Melbourne, Australia—except that after long exposure to the elements, it is covered in rust.
This is a sad fate for an object that has long since outlived its usefulness, but remains a thing of beauty. Its details— the claw feet, antique colonnades and embedded brass plaque—are testimony to its creator’s attention to aesthetic, as well as practical, principles.
As difficult as it may be to understand why anyone would treat something of this quality with such evident disdain, it did not take long to find someone who saw things in a different light.
“They are too heavy and take up too much space,” said the owner of a nearby printing shop, matter-of-factly. He lamented that he had two unwieldy old presses of his own, which he considered more of a burden than anything else. “I don’t know what to do with them!”
As for their value as artifacts of the past, he scoffed at the idea that anybody would want such reminders of “how poor we are”.
Finding a nice “retirement home” for these old workhorses of a bygone era was also out of the question, at least locally. “There is no museum in Pyin Oo Lwin,” declared one young woman when asked if there wasn’t a more suitable place to put an antique printing press than out on the curb.
But if Myanmar’s people were really as in tune with the times as they would like to be, they would soon realize that the worthless “junk” all around them could, in many cases, fetch high prices from aficionados of obsolete technology. Keen to revive the “authenticity” of oldschool mechanical printing presses, many analog lovers scour the Internet for machines that take them back to a time before printing—and seemingly everything else—went digital.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, they say. But if Myanmar is to preserve its unique character, its people would do well to hold on to at least some of the things that have served them so well for so long. If they do, they may discover that they are far richer than they realize.
When Myanmar’s government introduced a program in 2011 to enable car owners to replace their old vehicles with newer models, it inevitably made mountains of the country’s scrap heaps. But not all of the discarded clunkers filling these massive piles of metal are as worthless as they seem.
Squeezed in among all the old wrecks at the government-owned Insein junkyard on the outskirts of Yangon are a few true gems: 60s-era Volkswagen Beetles and buses that in many other countries would have been lovingly restored by collectors, not unceremoniously dumped for scrap metal.
One needn’t look far to find a market for vintage VWs: In neighboring Thailand, car enthusiasts will happily
pay thousands of dollars to snap up decades-old vans and “bugs”.
Tim Samek, a Canadian who works in Thailand’s oil and gas industry, recently bought a VW Beetle from a local in Thailand for US$2,500 and modified it to his own specifications. He says they’re fun and easy to work on, but not always easy to find.
The reason, says Mr. Samek, is that Thailand slaps high import duties on used cars, often matching the value of the vehicle itself. “I believe this is a protectionist measure to protect the Thai automobile industry,” he says. “That industry employs hundreds of thousands of people and was hard hit by the floods two years ago.”
On the Myanmar side, government policy plays a similar role in providing a disincentive to selling vintage cars to collectors. Under the system introduced
two years ago, old cars can be traded in for import licenses that are even more exorbitantly expensive than those in Thailand. That means they’re more valuable when handed over to government scrapyards than put on the open market.
But in the case of old VWs, that isn’t necessarily the case. A recent search on a popular vintage car website showed a restored Beetle from the 60s can fetch over $10,000 in Thailand, while VW buses sell for up to $60,000.
As long as the governments of these two countries continue to create barriers to imports, it may prove unfeasible to take advantage of the demand for old VWs among diehard fans. But if trade practices change (as they’re supposed to 2015, when Asean forms a free trade area), Yangon’s scrapyards could turn into goldmines.
A blue Volkswagen Beetle is squeezed in among cars piled high at the government-run junkyard in Insein Township, Yangon, which takes used cars from across Myanmar and turns them into scrap metal.It’s a long way from the ethnic Chin villages of southern Rakhine State to museums and private collections around the world, but somehow, the traditional weaving of the Sone-Tu has made that journey— and it has done so almost by accident.
“It came out of frustration,” explains Mai Ni Ni Aung, the director of SoneTu Backstrap Weavings, a project that has won international recognition for its efforts to preserve the traditional weaving techniques and patterns of the Sone-Tu, a Chin sub-group famed for its indigenous textiles.
It all began in the summer of 2002, when Mai Ni Ni Aung, who is herself a Sone-Tu Chin, was working with a team documenting the oral history, rituals and customs of the ethnic group. They wanted to film the shamans who were their local interlocutors in their traditional dress, but found to their surprise that there wasn’t a single item of Sone-Tu clothing to be found in the entire village.
“I was shocked,” recalls Mai Ni Ni Aung. “Imagine not being able to find Chin dress in a Chin village!”
This experience led her to ask why
Sone-Tu textiles appeared to be dying out among the people who made them, and what she could do to reverse this situation.
The answer to the first question was fairly obvious: Poverty had forced many local people to sell their handwoven clothing to outsiders attracted by its high quality, durability and sophisticated weaving patterns. In its place, the Sone-Tu started wearing cheap, mass-manufactured clothing devoid of any cultural value.
The second question—how to return traditional textiles to their rightful place in the lives of the Sone-Tu— was not so simple. The problem was that the skills needed to produce the highly sophisticated weaving that was once central to Chin culture were fast vanishing, as younger generations grew up without exposure to traditional clothing.
Desperate to do something about this, in May 2002 Mai Ni Ni Aung hastily recruited some young women in the village to take part in a training program under the guidance of older master weavers who still knew the secrets of Sone-Tu weaving.
“I wasn’t very ambitious at the time. All I wanted to do was arrange for some training,” she recalls, explaining that when she started out, she had no clear idea how she would revive a dying art that had been at the heart of her people’s culture for centuries.
What she eventually realized, however, was that it would be futile to teach the skills unless they could be used to provide the weavers with a livelihood. As it was, even very experienced weavers were living handto-mouth, often forced to do odd jobs just to survive.
So the first priority was to hire highly skilled weavers as teachers. Because the Sone-Tu don’t have a
Faced with possible extinction, a remarkable cultural tradition gets a new lease on lifePHOTO: J PAING / THE IRRAWADDY
written language, the sole repository of traditional weaving skills is the “muscle memory” of long-time practitioners of the fine art of back-strap loom weaving, the distinctive technique employed by the Chin.
Using a back-tension, or back-strap, loom with cotton or silk is an extremely time-consuming process, taking even an experienced weaver two to three weeks, at six hours a day, to produce just one 80-by-20-inch single-pattern shawl. The results, however, are often quite stunning in their beauty.
According to David W. Fraser, coauthor with his partner Barbara Fraser of “Mantles of Merit: Chin Textiles from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh,” the traditional textiles of the Chin are remarkable for their variety, quality and importance to their traditional culture as emblems of status.
In the decade since it came into existence as an “accidental” project, Sone-Tu Backstrap Weavings has made great strides in helping to keep these skills alive. It has saved 52 traditional patterns for posterity and trained more than 120 women, providing them and their elderly mentors with an income that enables them to dedicate themselves to their work. And this year, it opened its first weaving center in southern Rakhine State’s Minbya Township, employing around 20 women under its motto, “Preserving Culture through Opportunity”.
Besides its important role in preserving cultural traditions, the project has also had a positive social impact. In addition to partially supporting the education of nearly 300 children in the region, it has also
But for all that she has accomplished, Mai Ni Ni Aung is still not satisfied, because her original mission—to make traditional handwoven clothing a normal part of everyday life among the Sone-Tu—has not yet been fulfilled. With a minimum price tag of 80,000 kyat, or US $80, for a single-pattern shawl, the project’s products are well out of reach of most people in this desperately poor part of Myanmar.
“I still don’t feel my project is a success, as my products are not widely available in the local market,” she says. “As long as Chin people can’t afford to wear their traditional dress on a daily basis, I don’t think my mission is completed.”
She adds that to make its products more affordable, the project is trying to “modify the looms to enable us to
Sone-Tu weaving features remarkably intricate patterning
“Some of the Chin groups are particularly adept at using supplementary wefts to create remarkably intricate patterning,” Mr. Fraser explained recently via email. “Because warps are generally very closely packed in Chin textiles, in many cases the supplementary weft patterning is visible only on the front face of the textile.”
The patterns on Chin textiles differ greatly from one piece to the next, but all are characterized by a highly evolved esthetic sensibility and executed with a rare virtuosity. As Dr. Khosrow Sobhe of Textile Museum Associates of Southern California puts it, the patterns vary “from minimalist statements evocative of a Mark Rothko painting to exquisitely intricate supplementary yarn patterning, in some cases using weaving structures mastered exceptionally by the Chin.”
improved the status of women in their homes and communities.
“The employment has significantly raised the role of women in the region,” says Mai Ni Ni Aung. “With their regular incomes, they earn respect from their husbands, who are now willingly to take care of their babies and prepare food while their wives are busy at their looms.”
The project has achieved its success— which last year earned it a grant from the National Geographic Society—by increasing international recognition of the artistry of Sone-Tu weaving. It has done this largely through word of mouth, winning Sone-Tu textiles a dedicated following among private collectors and a place in such prestigious venues as Singapore’s Asian Civilization Museum, the Textile Museum in Washington and England’s Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, among others.
produce more textiles in a less timeconsuming manner.”
In the meantime, other customers who are more than willing to pay top dollar for exquisite examples of handweaving are helping to keep the project going.
Vanessa Chan, a Singaporean woman who has bought more than a dozen Sone-Tu products over the years, says they are superior to any other indigenous textiles she has ever seen.
Knowing that buying them not only helps to save a rare and special weaving tradition from extinction, but also employs rural women and supports the education of their children, makes them even more precious to her, she adds.
“I value the shawls that I buy from Mai Ni Ni Aung more than I would value a scarf from Hermes,” says Ms. Chan, expressing a sentiment shared by many.
“I STILL DON’T FEEL MY PROJECT IS A SUCCESS, AS MY PRODUCTS ARE NOT WIDELY AVAILABLE IN THE LOCAL MARKET.”
- Mai Ni Ni Aung
In a one-room wooden house in the northern part of Myanmar’s former capital lives Kin Maung Yin, a man who revels in the simplicity of his surroundings and whose only wish and care is to paint.
Recognized as one of the leading figures of modern art in Myanmar, Kin Maung Yin is revered by many of today’s artists as a living legend. But despite his stature, he leads an almost unimaginably austere lifestyle. He doesn’t own a refrigerator or a washing machine, and he sleeps on the floor not far from the spot where he paints. Blank canvases are piled high where a television might otherwise stand. He has no family.
“Less is more,” says the 75-year-old. “I have everything I need here.”
With no easel, the old painter sits
on a floor littered with brushes and Winsor & Newton acrylic paint tubes, brushing vibrant colors onto a canvas that leans against a wooden shelf. He spends the day listening to his favorite European classical music, and when the power cuts, he shakes his head, wailing out in a trademark shrill crescendo and then muttering, “This is Myanmar, this is Myanmar.”
When he tires of working, he drags himself across the floor with his arms, unable to stand without assistance. When he reaches his favorite chair, near the door, he pulls himself up onto a worn-out cushion to read for a while or gaze out at his overgrown garden.
“These knees trouble me,” he complains. “I can no longer move as freely as I did before. And I have some memory loss. Doctors blame that on the
stroke I suffered in 2000.
“I want to survive for another five years. That’s enough, as I have been through so many years.”
As a young artist, Kin Maung Yin used to say that his paintings would never be very popular in Myanmar. But he turned out to be a poor prophet, because collectors today are hot on his trail. At his latest show, held in Yangon in August, nearly all of the 50 paintings on display were sold. “Maybe they like it, I’m not sure,” he says.
But he’s being modest.
“He is a very rare artist,” says U Aung Soe Min, an art collector who cofounded Pansodan Gallery in Yangon. “He’s famous not only for his style—his personality and lifestyle have also become artistic. You cannot leave him out if you’re talking about Myanmar modern art.”
His paintings, U Aung Soe Min says, feature unexpected colors. “His unique style and lifelong creations have become an inspiration for younger artists. … He is leading a solitary life,
devoting himself only to art, paying no attention to popularity or making money.”
Indeed, Kin Maung Yin shuns the whole notion of art as a money-making proposition. He says he would feel “ashamed” to discuss putting a pricetag on his work.
“I’m not a seller,” he says. “Talking about prices is not my business. People come to me and buy my paintings. I don’t count how much they paid.”
Asked how he feels about others reselling his paintings at a profit, he simply says: “I don’t care.”
Kin Maung Yin started painting in the 1960s but trained earlier as
an architect, gaining an appreciation for form and color that would later influence his art, according to his friend and fellow artist Sun Myint.
As an architect, he devoured books about art and tried his hand at portraits, abstracts and any other form he learned through reading. “I’m a self-taught painter,” he says. “All I know about art is that simplicity is perfection.”
By 1962, Kin Maung Yin had made a name for himself in diplomatic circles and the art scene of Yangon and Mandalay as one of the new leaders of modern art in Myanmar, alongside Paw Oo Thett and Win Pe. Throughout his long career, his work has demonstrated
his complete commitment to artistic freedom.
“He thinks and paints freely,” says Sun Myint, who penned the forward to “This is Kin Maung Yin,” an Englishlanguage biography of the artist.
Anyone familiar with Kin Maung Yin’s style would agree. His abstracts include riots of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes. He says the Italian modernist Amedeo Modigliani inspired him to paint portraits with mask-like faces and elongated forms.
“I even prefer him to Picasso,” Kin Maung Yin says of Modigliani, who was primarily a figurative artist. “So I painted in his style for nearly 10 years.”
He adhered to that style in his famous portrait series “Seated Dancers”, as well as in another series six years ago depicting democracy icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. That series was especially renowned among collectors because it was created when the former military regime was still in power and the opposition leader was being held under house arrest. At the time, merely possessing a photo or painting of her was regarded as a dangerous political statement, often severely punished under the junta’s draconian decrees.
These days, now that a quasicivilian government is in power and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has won a seat in Parliament, the old artist continues to spend his hours simply, painting. He wakes up every morning at 6 o’clock and spends half an hour keeping still, thinking about the good old days and his parents. Sometimes he tries to visualize what he will create later in the day. “The result always turns out different,” he says.
He opens his house to anyone who wants to visit, warmly welcoming strangers and friends alike to a seat on the floor and offering a cup of coffee or tea.
If asked to name the most important thing in life for an artist, he answers matter-of-factly: food.
“It would be nonsense for me to name something ‘big’,” he says. “We all need food to survive, whether you are an artist or not. That’s all.”
Left: Artist Kin Maung Yin at work in his modest home in Yangon Previous page: Some of the painter’s portraits of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi PHOTO: JPAING / THE IRRAWADDY‘I’m not a seller... People come to me and buy my paintings. I don’t count how much they paid.’
—Kin Maung Yin
If it weren’t for a view of Shwedagon Pagoda from the terrace outside, a stop at Agnes restaurant in Yangon might feel like you’re an excursion to Paris for a rendezvous with the French bourgeoisie.
The restaurant, part of the high-end Kandawgyi Palace Hotel, offers French haute cuisine and a sophisticated ambiance to match—a teak walkway
leads from the main hotel building to a well-lit dining space with French Renaissancestyle paintings and statues, elegant blue-cushioned chairs, and tables topped with fresh flowers.
The chef, Christophe Buzaré, originally hails from the French region of Brittany and worked
previously at Le Planteur—another spot in Yangon known for gourmet French cuisine. He moved to Agnes for its opening last year and says he cooks in traditional French style with an emphasis on locally grown herbs and vegetables.
His menu offers an extensive choice of dishes, all suited to epicurean tastes—a sampling includes grilled lobster medallions on green tea-scented risotto; panfried foie gras on caramelized pears and ginger bread; and roasted duck breast with honey and rosemary sauce. For adventurous eaters, he recommends the slow-roasted Black Forest pigeon, a plump bird imported from the France-Germany border and served with crushed violet potato, though he says the recommendation often meets some resistance.
Myanmar, people get scared to eat it. After I explain that these aren’t the pigeons from Shwedagon Pagoda, but specially imported from France, they try,” he says with a laugh.
If that doesn’t convince you, opt for another of his specialties, the Brittanystyle langoustines with risotto—a dish so rich it practically melts in the mouth. And for dessert, don’t pass on the chocolate fondant cake, a real taste of decadence that’s filled with hot fudge, topped with icing sugar, and served with raspberry sauce and homemade star anise ice cream.
The food seems fit for royalty, but be warned—so are the prices. Appetizers range from about US $15 to $30 and entrees from about $30 to $50. For more bang for your buck, a set business lunch is offered Monday to Saturday for $25. The meal starts
with a tray of bite-sized hors d’oeuvres and continues with a pre-selected appetizer, a dish of your choice from the a la carte menu and a pre-selected dessert. The more upscale “Discovery Menu,” at $75, is a six-course meal that comes with five glasses of wine.
For wine aficionados willing to spend even more, Agnes has a cellar with exclusive vintage wines not found on the regular menu. Bottle prices start at about $200 and top out at about $3,000, according to Mr. Ho Kok Fai, director of food and beverage at the hotel. He says the restaurant once imported a $64,000 bottle of Chateau Petrus, one of the world’s most expensive wines, but had to send it back after failing to find any takers in Yangon. (The regular wine list offers more affordable options, with house wines starting at $5.)
Large groups can ask to be seated in a private dining room, with butler service, a sound system and a private balcony at no extra charge. But for arguably the best seat in the house, take a table outside on the terrace, overlooking Kandawgyi Lake, and enjoy the view of Yangon’s famous Shwedagon Pagoda. “At the six o’clock sunset, a gold color comes over the lake,” says Mr. Buzare. “It’s the best view in Yangon.”
Agnes is certainly a splurge, but for a unique experience that brings together French flair with a view of Myanmar’s most sacred sight, there are few spots better suited to indulgence.
Open daily from 11 am - 2:30 pm for lunch and from 6:30 pm - 10 pm for dinner.
In June 1954, the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), an armed group formed by the Karen National Union, was still reeling from the death of its leader, Saw Ba U Gyi, who had been killed in an ambush by government army troops four years earlier.
The loss left the KNDO (which later became the Karen National Liberation Army) severely weakened. The ethnic rebels struggled with a lack of financial support, medicine and weapons, leading to low morale.
Hoping to reverse the armed group’s fortunes, 28-year-old KNDO Maj Saw Kyaw Aye decided to do something that had never been done before in Myanmar: hijack a plane, in a desperate bid to reach a remote part of the Dawna mountain range in Kayin State where there was rumored to be an arms cache left behind by Japanese troops at the end of WWII.
In the end, the plan, carried out on June 25, 1954, failed: The Union of Burma Airways flight from Yangon to Sittwe that Saw Kyaw Aye and two colleagues decided to hijack was forced to land in Magyizin, a village in southern Rakhine State’s Gwa Township. Armed
with pistols and hand grenades, the trio was powerless to reach their intended destination because the Dakota plane they were in didn’t have enough fuel to take off.
Faced with a hopeless situation, the hapless hijackers returned control of the plane to the pilot and made off with a government-owned strongbox guarded by a military officer who was also on board. The box contained 700,000 kyat in cash—at that time worth far more than the US $700 it would fetch today.
Now, nearly six decades after this incident made headlines in Myanmar, it is attracting renewed attention thanks
to a book published in April of this year titled, “Myanmar’s Hijacking: The First in the World.”
Although the hijacking was not in fact the first in the world (that dubious honor goes to an incident in Arequipa, Peru, on Feb. 21, 1931), the book, by writer Hla Thaung, proved to be a big hit. And soon the movie-going public will also get a chance to relive this early episode in post-independence history, with a new film slated for release next year.
The 300 million kyat ($300,000) production, by Yangon-based director Antony, will be modest by the standards of studios in more developed movie markets. But despite its small budget, it aims to showcase Myanmar’s up-andcoming acting talent, and even hopes to find an international audience.
“I’m so excited to make this film. It’s a really big job,” said Antony, adding that while the film—based on the book and his own interviews with Saw Kyaw Aye and the last surviving passenger— would be historically accurate, it would also include “some romantic scenes.”
The director said he hopes to have the movie in theaters by next June, in time for the 60th anniversary of the hijacking, but worries he may have trouble arranging screenings at movie theaters in Yangon.
“If I can’t show it here at that time, I will attempt to show it in international theaters,” he said.
About 30 actors will participate in the project, including both new faces and some veterans of the Myanmar film industry. If possible, shooting will take place on location in Gwa Township, where the ill-fated plane made its landing.
Although filming is set to begin in November, one major challenge remains: finding a Dakota plane. There are only two of the aircraft still in use in Myanmar, both by the military. All the rest have been put in a museum in Yangon.
