Foreign Correspondence

[fuagf]

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi Walks Fine Line In Her New Role

"Aung San Suu Kyi Takes Oath of Office in Burma"

by June 05, 2013 1:12 PM .. [ audio of article inside ]


Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under fire for working with the government on a number of issues. Here, she meets in March with protesters who oppose a copper mine backed by Chinese investors. She supports the mining project.

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under fire for working with the government on a number of issues. Here, she meets in March with protesters who oppose a copper mine backed by Chinese investors. She supports the mining project.
Khin Maung Win/AP

To her many admirers in the international community, Aung San Suu Kyi remains one of the world's best known democracy icons.

But in Myanmar, also known as Burma, she is now very much a politician who is being criticized for trying to cooperate with the former military rulers who kept her under house arrest for nearly two decades.

~~~~~~
“ What we have is a situation where they're very used to top-down, unquestioned power. So anyone who's sitting out of the system, in a system that is still very new and untested, really has to negotiate things really carefully."

- Sean Turnell, Myanmar expert at Australia's Macquarie University
~~~~~~

If you want to see the old, iconic Aung San Suu Kyi, just head to the bustling headquarters of her party, the National League for Democracy, or NLD, in Yangon, the country's largest city and former capital.

Go past the tables selling Suu Kyi T-shirts, coffee mugs and calendars. Step in the door and look to the right, up on the wall. There she is, looking down at you, steely and defiant. The caption reads: "There will be change, because all the military has are guns."

On a recent trip to Japan, though, her message seemed to be that she's a politician and presidential hopeful now, so get used to it.

"I find that people are very interested in the fact that I said I would like to be president," Suu Kyi said. "And yet, I would quite like to meet the leader of any political party who doesn't really want to be the head of government."

In other words, all those years under house arrest and defying a military dictatorship gave her a heap of political capital, and she's going to spend it.

A Target For Protesters

Suu Kyi spent quite a bit of it in March, when, for the first time, she became the target of protesters in the town of Letpadaung.

She traveled there to express her backing of a controversial copper mine that has Chinese investors .. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/16/174431490/now-a-politician-aung-san-suu-kyi-is-the-object-of-protesters . Residents bitterly complained that she had sold them out, but it looks like her investment has paid off.

U Win Htein, a member of the NLD's Central Executive Committee, says that Suu Kyi's handling of the Letpadaung inquiry won her respect within the ruling party, known as the USDP, and the military.

"She's trying to prove to the people that she has the ability to lead the nation," he says. "Because when the report of Letpadaung town was announced, many people from the USDP as well as from the army were satisfied that she is for real. She is for real, and she is fair."

For months, Suu Kyi had tried to get face time with the generals, but they wouldn't meet with her.

But on March 26, she was invited to sit in the front row with the generals at the Armed Forces Day parade. Her supporters saw it as a breakthrough, after months of conciliatory remarks to the military, like this one in a December interview with the BBC:

"People criticize me for saying that, but I have to say this is the truth. I am fond of the army. This is something that is entrenched in my being," she said. "I was taught that my father was the father of the army, and therefore they were part of my family."

Her father, Gen. Aung San, also led the struggle for independence from Britain.

Reconciliation, Rather Than Confrontation

But Suu Kyi's efforts to cozy up to the military rubbed many citizens the wrong way. So have her muted comments on recent ethnic and sectarian violence .. http://www.npr.org/2013/04/24/178806312/as-myanmar-reforms-old-tensions-rise-to-the-surface .. across the country. But U Win Htein says that Suu Kyi's strategy of reconciliation instead of confrontation is a sensible one.

"National reconciliation means everybody — ethnic people, as well as the army," Win Htein explains. "So her determination is to achieve her goal, and that's why she's walking a very delicate line. And she won't abandon her principles."

Some observers think that Suu Kyi struck some sort of deal with the generals, allowing her to play the game of politics as long as she doesn't threaten them. No proof of such a deal has emerged.

Sean Turnell, a Myanmar expert at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says that while the world may regard Suu Kyi as an opposition leader, Myanmar's political system is traditionally not one that brooks any opposition.

"What we have is a situation where they're very used to top-down, unquestioned power," Turnell says. "So anyone who's sitting out of the system, in a system that is still very new and untested, really has to negotiate things really carefully."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/07/03/188303817/Myanmars-Aung-San-Suu-Kyi-Walks-Fine-Line-In-Her-New-Role

======

Military Involved in Massive Land Grabs: Parliamentary Report

By HTET NAING ZAW and AYE KYAWT KHAING / THE IRRAWADDY| Tuesday, March 5, 2013


Farmers from Rangoon Division’s Swepyitha Township play instruments during a protest on
Saturday to demand compensation for loss of their land. (Photo: Aye Kyawt Khaing / The Irrawaddy)

RANGOON—Less than eight months after a parliamentary commission began investigating land-grabbing in Burma, it has received complaints that the military has forcibly seized about 250,000 acres of farmland from villagers, according to the commission’s report.

The Farmland Investigation Commission submitted its first report to Burma’s Union Parliament on Friday, which focused on land seizures by the military.

According to the report, the commission received 565 complaints between late July and Jan. 24 that allege that the military had forcibly confiscated 247,077 acres (almost 100,000 hectares) of land. The cases occurred across central Burma and the country’s ethnic regions, although most happened in Irrawaddy Division.

The report said farmlands were confiscated for six different reasons: the expansion of urban areas; expansion of industrial zones; expansion of army battalions and military units; construction of state-owned factories; implementation of state-run agricultural and animal husbandry projects; and land allocation to private companies with links the military.

The commission recommends that undeveloped lands are returned to their owners or handed over to the state. In cases where land has been developed, affected farmers should receive adequate compensation from the military, the report said.

Pe Than, Lower House MP for the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party and a commission member, said Burma’s military Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing has acknowledged that the military has been involved in land seizures in the past and would seek to address the issue.

“When I met with Vice Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing at the end of February, he confirmed to me that the army will return seized farmlands that are away from its bases, and they are also thinking about providing farmers with compensation,” he said.

Pe Than said the parliamentary report on military land grabs was submitted to Parliament first because these cases are less complex, have complete data and are more obvious to prove. Further parliamentary reports on other forms of land-grabbing are due to follow.

Lower House member Thein Nyunt said parliamentarians would discuss land-grabbing issues and possible amendments for the existing land laws in coming weeks. “Compensation for confiscated land will be on the agenda, too,” said the opposition MP.

Burma’s military junta ruled the country for decades and land seizures by the army were widespread and local dissent was brutally crushed.

After a nominally civilian government took over 2011, the military let it be known that it would end such practices, but whether it will do so remains to be seen. Land-grabbing by powerful private companies meanwhile, has increased rapidly in the wake of Burma’s socio-economic reforms.

Land rights activist Han Shi Win said Burmese law states that the military should return unused farmlands and compensate for seized land.

“Article 31 of the Farmland Law states that if no work is done on a confiscated land within six months, the land shall be returned to its owner. That’s why we are trying to bring back land to farmers,” he said. “But the army does not follow the law.”

Han Shi Win said the Central Land Management Committee, chaired by Minister for Agriculture and Irrigation Myin Hlaing, had done little to properly implement the law in land seizure cases.

The activist warned that if the long-festering land grabbing complaints were not dealt soon angry farmers might resort to violent protests, such as in Irrawaddy Division’s Maubin Township, where dozens were injured and a policeman killed when villagers clashed with security forces on Feb. 26.

In the Irrawaddy Delta, farmers are becoming increasingly bold in demanding back their land or compensation, now that the government is becoming more tolerant towards public protest.

During a government ceremony to mark Peasants Day on Saturday, about 700 hundred villagers from Shwepyitha Township, located on the northern outskirts of Rangoon, came to demand that authorities resolve their complaints.

Supported by the local Diversity Party, they handed out pamphlets stating that 1,742 farmers lost about 11,000 acres (4,422 hectares) since 1986 to private companies, such as Zay Ka Bar, Yuzana Group and Htoo Group—the latter firm is owned by Tay Za, a business crony of the former junta.

The groups’ leader San Win Myint said the farmers demanded that authorities to resolve the complaints which they sent to the Rangoon Division’s Land Seizures Inquiry Commission.

“We are celebrating Peasants Day here … but we don’t have any plot of farmland,” he added bitterly.

Aung Thein Lin, a member of the Rangoon Division Land Seizures Commission who was attending the ceremony, told reporters that the complaints were being dealt with in accordance to law and that farmers could get compensated for the value of the land at the time of confiscation.

“We … are now making inquiry about land grab situation in Shwepyitha Township. After that, we will send the report to Parliament,” said the Lower House MP, who belongs to the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party.

Khin Maung, a farmer from Lein Kone village in Shwepyitha Township, said the community would not accept the paltry compensation sums that the government was likely to offer.

“We will only have 800 kyats [US $0.93] per acre under the existing law for my land that was grabbed,” he said. “It is not fair for us to get such low compensation.”

Khin Maung warned that if farmers’ demands were not met, they would retake control of their old lands. “We will start to plant our farm plots again in 2013,” he said.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/28506