The trouble with FacebookWomen’s challenge in 2015Great Gamble on the MekongMyanmar monks’ interfaith visit

W E E K L Y

ISSUE 10, VOL. 4 MARCH 5 – MARCH 11, 2015 | ISSUEd EVERy tHURSdAy | www.MIzzIMA.COM

How Myanmar could gain from the solar revolution

Myanmar’s solaropportunity

Pioneering solar-powered plane due in Mandalay on March 10

editorial 3

Editor In-Chief/Managing Director Soe Myint Director Thin Thin Aung | Manager Saw Shwe Lin | Editors Geoffrey Goddard, Julian Gearing, Aung Khin | Con-tributors Tim McLaughlin, Gordon Brown | Photo Editor Hong Sar | Layout Designer Zeyar Htet | Marketing Executive April Thae Mar Seinn | Finance Manager Seint Seint | Newsroom Secretary Phoo Pwint Wai | Publisher Soe Myint (00081)

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W E E K L Y

The problem with Facebook

Facebook is supposed to bring people together. But it can be di-visive and problematic. We only have to look at recent incidents

to see how it can incite hatred, anger or misunderstandings.

It is unclear who was behind the posting of a map showing Myanmar having taken over Bangladesh on the official Facebook page of the Myan-mar Air Force last week. The graphic showed both Myanmar and Bangladesh in red with the Myanmar flag superim-posed on them. The accompanying text urged the Myanmar people to strike Bangladesh before it was too late. It was posted on February 20 and was taken down on February 25. Needless to say, it generated a furore among Bangladeshi social media users who commented harshly and shared the in-cendiary graphic. Then there’s the case of freelance photographer Ko Aung Nay Myo, who was detained by the au-thorities after posting a satirical photo-shopped photo that mocked President U Thein Sein. Police confirmed that he was charged on February 28 for having violated the 1950 Emergency Provi-sions Act, the Associated Press news agency reported. He faces seven years in jail if found guilty. A complaint letter from the police accused Ko Aung Nay Myo of “harming, deterring and dis-turbing” the functions of government. There are indications he was targeted for his political activism.Eventually he was released after three days of ques-

tioning on March 2 without charge.There was also the high-profile case

in December after the newly-opened VGastro bar in Yangon posted what was regarded by many as an inappro-priate image of the Buddha on a pro-motional flyer for a special event. The three owners of the bar, including New Zealander Phil Blackwood, are on trial on charges of insulting religion. All three have said they had no intention of insulting or damaging the country’s main religion, Buddhism.

And then there are the daily slang-ing matches that play out through the pages of Facebook where religious, ethnic and racial slurs are cast with abandon, further stirring unease in some communities in multi-religious and multi-racial Myanmar. Facebook has complaint mechanisms and a code of conduct but is unable to effectively police or censor insulting or inciting posts. Some Facebook pages may be taken down by the company if there is a complaint. This can be infuriating for Facebook account owners if they find their page taken down for little or no reason. Facebook and other forms of social media are revolutionising how people communicate. This is particu-larly true in Myanmar. Internet reach is expanding rapidly and 3G and 4G phones will soon allow people to login to their Facebook pages in the far-flung corners of the country.

Social media is proving a blessing and a curse. It comes with no instruc-

tion manual or guidance regarding etiquette and practice. If there is a code of conduct it is hidden away in the fine print that nobody reads. After all, the social media companies want people to sign up and do not want to deter people with a daunting set of rules.

In addition, many people fail to recognise that inappropriate photos – posted for their friends or the world to see - may come back to haunt them later in life.

It comes down to society to offer guidance on how people use social me-dia, just as some would argue etiquette rules need to be applied to the use of mobile phones and tablets in public.

One group that is reaching out to its peers is the anti-hate speech movement, Panzagar. It campaigns on a slogan of replacing hate speech with “panzagar”, or “flower” speech. The Panzagar movement was started by well-known blogger U Nay Phone Latt in early 2014 to promote the respon-sible use of the internet. Supporters of the movement have distributed pamphlets in major cities reminding the public that aside from “draconian censorship” the other threat to free speech is “irresponsible and hateful speech.” Panzagar deserves applause for its gentle and courageous campaign to create a more tolerant Myanmar. Its campaign is a powerful model for the responsible use of the internet. More need to follow its example.

CONTENTS

14‘We are going to unveil the Tesla home battery, the consum-er battery that would be for use in people’s houses or businesses fairly soon’

Elon MuskEntrepreneur and inventor

3128

AFFAIRS

BUSINESS

6 IN FOCUS Fallout from

the Kokang conflict

8 NEWS

12 CLOSER LOOK Human rights progress ‘stalled’,

says Amnesty International

14 IN DEPTH Myanmar’s solar opportunity

20 IN DEPTH A gamble on the Mekong

with millions of lives at stake

24 TRAVEL Interfaith visit to Indonesia

26 LAST WEEK IN NAY PYI TAW

31 THE DEBATE How troubled is Myanmar’s

relationship with China?

28 IN DEPTH ASEAN energy interconnectivity:

How Myanmar could benefit

32 INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT SCHEDULES

Puruesh ChaudharyAGAHI founder

‘One of the trends we have seen is public agitation [against] intolerance and hate speech being broad-casted, which now is also moving in on the vernacular print media. Naming and shaming seems to be key here’

44 Cover Photo: Solar Impulse Project

5

936

CULTURE & LIFESTYLE

DEVELOPMENT

34 INFOCUS Shinbyu festival celebrates

joining the Sangha

36 TRAVEL Discovering the Golden Land:

A journey in southern Myanmar

40 CLOSER LOOK Women’s development

lags in crucial year

43 ADB provides loan for Maubin-Phyapon road upgrade

6 AFFAIRS // in focus

Northern crisis

Fallout from the Kokang conflictA Myanmar government soldier walks down the shuttered streets of Lukkai in the Kokang Region of northern Shan State following heavy fighting against Kokang rebels known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. The fighting has forced thousands of civilians to flee and created tensions between the Myanmar government and China. Photo: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA

www.mizzima.com 7

8 AFFAIRS // news

Yangon municipal police demolished the Michaungkan protest camp in a 3am raid on February 26 during which they arrest-ed 14 land rights demonstrators and four food vendors.

The camp was established beside Maha Bandoola Gardens in downtown Yangon nearly a year ago by protesters seeking the return of land they say was seized by the military at Michaungkan in Thingangyun Township in 1991.

A day before the arrests, a senior police officer ordered the protesters to move the camp because road works were planned at the site.

The 14 land rights protesters were charged with breaching Section 18 of the Peaceful Assembly and Procession Law and the vendors with violating Section 68 of the Municipal Act. They were released at about 5:30pm on February 26 and the cases against them are due to begin on March 11.

One of the Michaungkan protesters, Ma Than Shwe, said she suffered injuries to her arms and legs during the raid.

Daw Myat Myat Soe, one of the four

food sellers who were arrested, said they had heard in advance that municipal police would seize their handcarts during the raid and she had taken care to leave hers in a safe place.

On February 18, Kyauktada Town-ship court sentenced 14 other Michaung-

kan land rights protesters who had moved their sit-in nearer to Yangon City Hall to six months in prison. [Nan Myint]

Sit-in site demolished

Police demolish Michaungkan protest camp, make 18 arrests  

Chiang Mai – The leader of the Restora-tion Council of Shan State has welcomed his group’s recent signing of a commit-ment for peace and reconciliation with the government, saying it opened a new page of history.

RCSS chairperson Lieutenant-Gen-eral Yawd Serk made the comment while meeting journalists at an undisclosed location in a Thai-Myanmar border town on February 23.

The RCSS was one of four armed ethnic groups that signed the deed of commitment for peace and reconciliation at a ceremony in Nay Pyi Taw on Febru-ary 12, Union Day.

 “It is like opening a new page in his-tory so that we will be able to engage in political dialogue; we can say it is a suc-

cess for RCSS,” Lt-Gen Yawd Serk said.“In the past, the president or the army

or parliament had never been involved in signing an agreement like this in order to solve the armed conflicts in the country. This is the first time. So, I see it as a good sign,” he said. 

Lt-Gen Yawd Serk said although a na-tional ceasefire agreement was yet to be agreed at negotiations between the Na-tionwide Ceasefire Coordination Team, an alliance of 16 ethnic armed groups, and the government’s Union Peace-mak-ing Work Committee, both sides accept-ed the need for political dialogue.

Although complete mutual trust was lacking between the two sides, it could be achieved through meetings and negotia-tions, he said.

The Union government and the Res-toration Council of Shan State reached a ceasefire agreement in November 2011. The RCSS is not a member of the NCCT but attends the ceasefire talks.

The armed groups that signed the deed of commitment on Union Day were the RCSS, Karen National Union, Democratic Karen Benevolent Army and the KNU/KNLA Peace Council.

A total of 13 armed ethnic groups were represented at the Union Day cere-mony, many of which said they had not expected to be asked to sign the deed and could not do so without consulting their organisations. [Phanida]

‘I see it as a good sign’

RCSS chair Yawd Serk lauds ‘historical’ peace commitment

Michaungkan protesters under arrest in Kyauktada Township, Yangon, on February 26, 2015. Photo: Mizzima

www.mizzima.com 9

Stakeholders will be invited to discuss a bill amending the National Education Law with members of a parliamentary committee from March 5 to 15, Upper House Speaker U Khin Aung Myint said on February 24.

The discussions with the Upper House bill committee are due to take place in an Upper House conference room and follow the agreement at four-party talks to amend the law.

The discussion will include represent-atives of a number of groups, including students who have been campaigning to change the controversial law.  

“We will discuss with lawmakers all the points we would like to see amended,” said Ma Phyo Phyo Aung, a member of one of the most active student groups, the Democ-racy Education Initiative Committee.  

The bill committee will hold separate talks with the Democracy Education In-itiative Committee, political parties and the National Network for Education Re-form, on March 5, 6 and 7, respectively.

The committee will hold meetings with political parties and civil society groups, and aims to finish discussions with advisors on the bill on March 15.

A concern of the students and the

NNER is that a draft bill produced by the Education Ministry but rejected during the four-party talks was published in state-run newspapers on February 19. In response, the students and the NNER condemned the move in an open letter to the Education Ministry on February 22.

The government‘s action was “a violation of the agreement reached in the four-party meeting”, the letter said.

At four-party talks on February 16, the government agreed to submit amendments to the law to parliament. [Mizzima]

As a Myanmar embassy special legal team tries to raise funds to assist the two Koh Tao murder suspects awaiting trial in Thailand, a question has emerged over financial support pledged for their defence by parliament.

Lawyer U Aung Myo Thant, a mem-ber of the team, said that although the Upper House had pledged to provide the team with K30 million [US$30,000] for the pair’s defence, it had received only about K17 million.

The contribution was received four months ago, U Aung Myo Thant told Mizzima on February 24.

“We’ve received only US$17,000 which is equivalent to about 17 million kyat including five million kyat for the cost of health of [suspect] Win Zaw

Htun’s father in Yangon. We need more money for upcoming activities,” he said.

Migrant workers Ko Win Zaw Htun and Ko Zaw Lin Oo have been charged with the murders of British tourists Hannah Witheridge and David Miller on Thailand’s Tao island on September 15. The two men, who are from Rakhine State, have pleaded not guilty.

On October 13, Upper House Speaker U Khin Aung Myint said U Khin Shwe, U Nay Win Tun and himself had donated a total of K30 million to the em-bassy’s special team to help the Myanmar suspects.

The money was paid through a non-government organisation, said U Nay Win Tun, an Upper House MP.

Rakhine National Network chairman

U Tin Htoo Aung said some money had been spent by the committee set up for the case and some was yet to be trans-ferred.

“We don’t know now how much money has been spent for the case. Only after the case ends, only after doing the accounts, we will be able to know how much money has been spent,” he said. 

Separate efforts are being to raise money to support the defence of the two suspects.

U Aung Myo Thant said the  em-bassy’s special team was seeking bail for the two accused and had prepared the 2 million baht [K66 million] bail fee.

The trial is due to resume on July 8. [Hein Ko Soe]

‘We need more money’

Legal team says still waiting for funds to aid Koh Tao murder suspects

Talks to end March 15

Upper House panel to begin discussing education law changes

TEaShoP EduCaTIonChildren attend class at a mobile classroom bus of the Myanmar Mobile Education (My-me) Project, in a teashop classroom in Yangon, Myanmar, 24 February 2015. The one-year project aims to provide free education for some 200 children who work in the teashops in Yangon. EPa/nYEIn Chan naInG

10 AFFAIRS // closer look

Progress on human rights “stalled” in Myanmar last year, Amnesty International has said in an annual report critical of

failures to investigate abuses and the impunity granted to the security forces and other government officials.

The international human rights watchdog said there were “backward steps in key areas” in Myanmar, to which it devoted four pages of its 424-page report released on February 25 on human rights in 160 countries and territories in 2014.

The report on Myanmar focussed on 10 issues, including discrimination, internal armed conflicts, the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, land disputes and impunity.

The section on discrimination dealt with Rakhine State and said the situation of the Rohingya worsened during the year.

“Individuals suffered persistent discrimination in law and policy, exac-erbated by a deepening humanitarian crisis, ongoing eruptions of religious and anti-Muslim violence and government failures to investigate attacks on Rohing-ya and other Muslims,” Amnesty said in the report.

“The authorities also failed to address incitement to violence based on national, racial and religious hatred,” it said, and warned that the Rakhine Action Plan unveiled by the government in October would, if implemented, “further en-trench discrimination and segregation of Rohingya”.

On internal armed conflicts, the report said the government continued to deny full and sustained access for humanitarian workers to displaced communities in Kachin State, particularly those in areas controlled by the Kachin Independence Army.

It also referred to the displacement of civilians during fighting between the Tatmadaw and armed ethnic groups in Kayin and Mon states in September.

“Freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly remained severely restricted, with scores of human rights defenders, journalists, political activists and farmers

arrested or imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of their rights,” it said, highlighting the case of Ko Htin Kyaw, leader of the Movement for Democracy Current Force.

He was sentenced in September to a total of 13 years and four months’ impris-onment after being convicted of violating 11 counts of Section 505(b) of the Penal Code and three counts under Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law.

Amnesty said President U Thein Sein had in June signed into law amendments to the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Assembly Law but despite the revisions it retained “severe restrictions” on the right to freedom of assembly.

The report said media reforms were undermined by the arrest and impris-onment of journalists and other media workers. At least 10 media workers remained in prison at the end of the year, it said.

“The President failed to keep his promise to release all prisoners of conscience by the end of 2013, despite a far-reaching Presidential Pardon an-nounced on 30 December 2013,” it said, and also expressed concern about a panel appointed to review political prisoner cases.

“The Committee for Scrutinizing the Remaining Prisoners of Conscience, es-tablished by the government in February 2013, did not function effectively and it was unclear whether it would continue to operate beyond 2014,” the report said.

The section on land disputes referred

Human rights progress ‘stalled’, says Amnesty International

“Freedoms of expres-sion and peaceful assembly remained severely restricted, with scores of hu-man rights defenders, journalists, political activists and farmers arrested or impris-oned solely for the peaceful exercise of their rights,”

www.mizzima.com 11

to the fatal shooting by riot police of a woman during a protest by villagers in December against the fencing of farm-land for the controversial Letpadaung copper mine near Monywa.

“Environmental and human rights concerns relating to the mining project had not been addressed by the end of the year,” the report added.

On torture, Amnesty said Myan-mar failed to ratify the UN Convention against Torture “as promised by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in January”.

It said investigations into complaints of torture against the military and police “were rare and suspected perpetrators were seldom held to account”.

It cited the death in military custody in October of freelance journalist Ko Aung Kyaw Naing, also known as Ko Par Gyi.

“After national and international

pressure, in November the police and the MNHRC [Myanmar National Human Rights Commission] opened an investi-gation. At the end of the year no one was known to have been held to account for his death,” it said.

It also referred to the detention by the Tatmadaw in August of seven farmers at a village in Chin State who were accused of being in contact with an armed ethnic group.

“The seven were ill-treated – some of them tortured – over a period of between four and nine days. By the end of the year there was no information about an in-dependent investigation into the case or of suspected direct perpetrators or their superiors being brought to justice.”

The report said immunity from pros-ecution for past violations by the security forces and other government officials remained codified in Article 445 of the military-drafted 2008 Constitution.

It said the MNHRC remained “large-ly ineffective in responding to complaints of human rights violations,” noting that an 11-member panel was appointed in September to replace the previous 15-member body.

“Most members were government-af-filiated and the selection and appoint-ment process lacked transparency, casting further doubts on the independence and effectiveness of the Commission,” it said.

Amnesty noted that the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Ms Yanghee Lee, had warned against potential backtracking on human rights in a report to UN General Assembly in October.

It also noted that Myanmar had failed to sign an agreement for the establish-ment of an Office of the UN High Com-mission on Human Rights and to ratify core international human rights treaties. [Mizzima]

Myanmar’s solar opportunityRecord flight attempt raises hopes for a solar and superbattery revolution

Marc Jacob

12 AFFAIRS // in depth

Mission impossible. That is what the Swiss inventors and pilots Betrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg

heard again and again when they first came up with the audacious idea of a solar-powered aircraft. And that such an aircraft could fly around the world? Preposterous.

On March 10, if all goes well, the Solar Impulse 2 single-seater solar-pow-ered aircraft – with a wingspan of a Boeing 747 – will land at Mandalay In-ternational Airport, arriving from India on a round-the-world journey record attempt that began in Abu Dhabi early this month.

The airplane – capable of flying day and night on solar powered batteries – will inspire energy and technology innovations in Myanmar, spreading a pioneering spirit among youth and mobilising enthusiasm for renewable energies, say the pilots, who will take turns to fly the aircraft.

“With the support of the President of the Republic of the Union of Myan-mar, U Thein Sein, the Government and the people of Myanmar, we are a

few short weeks away from a historical moment for the country, the energy industry and innovators across the globe,” said the Swiss ambassador to Myanmar, Christoph Burgener. “An idea born in Switzerland, Solar Impulse seeks original solutions to achieve the impossible, teaching us that working together delivers superior outcomes,” Mr Burgener said. “Similarly, as the My-anmar people come together, a brilliant future will be fostered for the country,” he said.

Message for MyanmarA lot of hype, hoopla and sterling

public relations may surround the world record-breaking event, but the aircraft is real and both its predecessor Solar Impulse 1 and the improved version send a message that alternative energy sources have really arrived – though don’t expect a solar-powered passenger aircraft just yet.

The two pilots bring a message to Myanmar at a crucial time as the country continues to make its transition from a military-run backwater into what many people hope will become a fully

www.mizzima.com 13

The Solar Impulse 2 aircraft on a test flight. Photo: Solar Impulse Project

14 AFFAIRS // in depth

democratic country.The team says Solar Impulse 2’s visit is a

significant milestone that will raise aware-ness about the pressing need for sustainable and innovative energy solutions. During the plane’s stop in Mandalay, about 1,000 university students will meet the pilots and participate in learning sessions in which they will acquire knowledge about renewa-ble energies.

“The co-pilots and founders of Solar Impulse embody a spirit that can inspire present and future generations in Myanmar and around the world to be explorers in their own lives.” said U Linn Myiang, chief operating officer of First Myanmar Invest-ment Company, a co-sponsor of the round-the-world attempt. “As a country blessed with many natural resources, the cause for renewable energies lies close to home. Much of our country’s success lies in identifying technologies that promote sustainable ener-gy. The Solar Impulse 2 reminds us that such innovation and technology is available with unrelenting persistence and imagination.”

 The Swiss pilots, Piccard and Borsch-berg, both pioneers and innovators, are the driving force behind Solar Impulse and strong believers that an exploring and pioneering spirit can change the world. After 12 years of planning and development, the plane will fly over the Arabian Sea, India, Myanmar, China, the Pacific Ocean, the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, and southern Europe or North Africa, before closing the loop by returning to the point of departure, Abu Dhabi.

More than just breaking a recordThe pioneering spirit is not just about

the invention of a solar powered aircraft, one that can even fly through the night due to

(Top) Bertrand Piccard, pilot, innovator and adventurer, co-founder of the Solar Impulse project

(Bottom) andre Borschberg, pilot, innovator, co-founder of the Solar Impulse project

www.mizzima.com 15

the energy stored in its state-of-the-art batteries.

As both pilots say, the aircraft and its journey around the world are designed to inspire people, governments and inventors work towards dumping destructive and polluting fossil fuels and look to cleaner or renewable options including solar, wind, wave and geo-thermal. Australia, for example, has just connected its first wave-powered station to the national grid.

Myanmar stands on the threshold of change, where it is faced with the challenge dramatically upgrading and expanding its electrical grid to not only reach the 60 percent of the population who are not connected, but also to help power the coming industrial and man-ufacturing revolution about which the country’s politicians and business people wax lyrical.

time to go solar?Whether Myanmar takes the

renewable route appears hostage to conventional thinking and inconvenient timing. The Nay Pyi Taw government

and its advisors are largely focused on how to quickly turn the lights on across the country. To them, that means Tmeans focusing on hydropower dams and coal and gas-powered stations. Even though building or rehabilitating power plants takes time, this is the conven-tional approach, and typically it receives encouragement from international funding, including World Bank input.

Solar power, on the other hand, is not viewed in the country as a viable alternative, certainly not on a large scale, despite no shortage of sunshine. Some small-scale solar initiatives are under-way in the country to use solar to gen-erate electricity. The Ministry of Electric Power and the Green Earth Power Co Ltd of Thailand signed a deal two years ago to set up a solar power plant capable of generating 50 megawatts in Minbu, in Magway Region. US-based private equity company ACO has signed an agreement to build a solar power plant with generating capacity of 250 MW in Magway Region’s Mingyan district. The project is expected to be completed by 2015-16.

Micro-projects are also underway where homes or offices are fitted with solar panels to power conventional appliances. In additional, some house-holders in far-flung areas have taken to installing a single solar panel that can power lightbulbs, TVs and possibly refrigerators.

Given the rush to power up Myan-mar, conventional energy options – coal, oil, gas and hydropower – are likely to rule, though the inevitable delay in reaching remote parts of the country will mean increasing numbers of people will look to solar power on a domestic or small business level.

inconvenient timing?Renewable energy may be the buzz

word around the world in the face of the massive pollution that is blamed for climate change and drastically drop-ping oil prices. And word is out among technology watchers that the world is on the brink of a “clean energy” break-through – several, in fact. Apart from an increasing number of breakthroughs in terms of wind, wave and thermal power,

Small-scale solar panel options are now available in Myanmar. Photo: hong Sar (Ramonya)

16 AFFAIRS // in depth

solar developments – both in terms of solar panels and batteries – are under the spotlight and attracting increasing media coverage.

Are we on the brink of a new world? Many people, even fanatical advo-cates of solar power, are unaware quite how close we are to reaching a critical milestone in the industry, says Martin Tillier, writing for Oilprice.com last year. Within a fairly short space of time, solar generated electricity will be fully cost competitive with coal-powered electric-ity – at least if the governments of the world’s two largest energy consuming nations have their way.

Mr Tillier says both the US and China have goals of reducing the cost of solar generated electricity to that level, and quickly.

Myanmar’s neighbour China is on

an urgent quest to develop solar power to replace dirty, suffocating coal, a pollutant responsible for making many Chinese cities almost un-livable, and has been working on it since the early 2000s.

The US Energy Information Ad-ministration says coal accounted for 69 percent of China’s energy production as recently as 2011. Cost comparative solar power and a centralised government committed to change will make that number laughable in a few years, says Mr Tillier.

Inventors and manufacturers are on the brink of a major breakthrough with designs for relatively light, durable and competitively priced batteries. As journalist Steve LeVine has written in his new book, “The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World,” a whole host of scientists in 20

nations around the world are focused on building a battery that “will change the world.”

The invention of a super battery will help “enable solar and wind” and be four to five times better than current batteries, says Mr LeVine. The main players working on the designs are China, Japan, South Korea and US, with Japan and South Korea in front. Oil and automobile companies may still be betting against such a breakthrough but Mr LeVine – having spent two years in the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago following the development with the scientists – believes the energy landscape will be dramatically trans-formed within a decade. As he told one TV news host, people need to buy his book to find out if there is a “Hollywood ending.”

a solar-powered car, not reliant on external charging, unlike the Tesla models. Photo: neeravbhatt

One person who appears to be-lieve in Hollywood endings or at least gambling they may work is innovative American entrepreneur Elon Musk. Mr Musk – who started Paypal, Solar City, Tesla electric cars, and a space rocket company and is the real-life model for the Hollywood movie series Iron Man – mentioned seemingly off the cuff recently that his powerhouse lithium-ion battery will power houses within the foreseeable future.

“We are going to unveil the Tesla home battery, the consumer battery that would be for use in people’s houses or businesses fairly soon,” he told Bloomb-

Elon Musk. Photos: Steve Jurvetson

www.mizzima.com 17

elon Musk’s solAr dreAM

Elon Musk – the real-life inspiration for the Holly-wood movie series “Iron Man” – is betting big that the United States will fall for his Tesla electric cars, quick recharging stations, and his company’s own venture into providing a superbattery for houses and small businesses, recharged by the sun.

The Real Iron Man

erg News late last month. Mr Musk predicts that an energy

revolution will sweep the US within a decade. He has on occasion put down his hard-earned personal wealth to back up his belief in the power of the sun.

small scale, people-power initiativesWhether the arrival of Solar Impulse

will help propel Myanmar on a cleaner energy path remains to be seen. Once

the media furore is over, the Myanmar authorities are likely to return to the conventional energy paths promoted by fossil fuel companies and international financiers. Solar initiatives – bar simple, single solar panels – tend to be relatively expensive.

But if the breakthroughs predicted as scientists compete to develop cheap solar panels and batteries come to fruition, solar may well grow to become

an important part of Myanmar’s energy mix.

As Solar Impulse takes off for the next leg of its round the world jour-ney this week, bound for China, the Myanmar authorities would be wise to take a new look at solar and reach out to the experts – whether in China, Japan, South Korea or the US – for navigation in this brave new world.

author Steve LeVine Photo: Enlik Mukhanova

18 AFFAIRS // in depth

Inside the battle for the superbatteryA worldwide race is on to perfect the next

engine of economic growth, the advanced lith-ium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Just who will win?

Mr Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of scientists is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists – almost all foreign born – are not alone. With so much at stake, researchers in Japan, South Korea, and China are in the same pur-suit. The drama intensifies when a Silicon Valley start-up licenses the federal laboratory’s signature invention with the aim of a blockbuster sale to the world’s biggest carmakers.

The book The Powerhouse is a real-time, two-year account of big invention, big commer-cialisation, and big deception. It exposes the layers of aspiration and disappointment, competition and ambition behind this great turning point in the his-tory of technology.“We are a few years away from state-of-the-art stationary batteries being cheap enough for customers--such as the Myanmar population--to afford,” Mr LeVine told Mizzima Weekly.

“But it is precisely the type of market that bat-teries combined with solar could have their most profound impact.”

Mr LeVine said a country-size grid is simply not going to be built in Myanmar- it would be truly too expensive.

“Thus, some 70 percent of the population will continue to be without electricity. The answer is to install solar at the village or neighbourhood level, combined with off-the-shelf lithium-ion or even cheap lead-acid batteries. As it did with a solar project for Mandalay in August 2014, the US gov-ernment could and should facilitate such projects,” he said.

www.mizzima.com 19

The impact of legal changes in Myan-mar on press freedom will be among the topics to be discussed at a global event being co-hosted by the Interna-tional Press Institute and Mizzima in Yangon next month.

The IPI says more than 200 jour-nalists from 60 countries are expected to attend its first World Congress and General Assembly to be held in Myan-mar, under the theme “On the path to a free media”.

Other key topics to be explored during the event from March 27 to 29 will include reporting crimes against humanity, covering religious issues and

best practices for media owners.The impact of legal changes and

whether they promote press freedom rather than limiting it will be discussed at a panel discussion titled “Uphold-ing media freedom through laws and practice” on March 27.

The panel will comprise Informa-tion Minister U Ye Htut, the executive director of the Canada-based Centre for Law and Democracy, Mr Toby Mendel, and the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Mr David Kaye.

A law professor at the University of California, Irvine, Mr Kaye was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to his three-year term as spe-cial rapporteur on August 1, 2014.

Registration is open for the IPI World Congress and General Assem-bly. More information, including the program, is available at: 2015.ipiworld-congress.com or the link below.

http://2015.ipiworldcongress.com/events/ipi-world-congress-2015/event-summary-8578d2a16b8145d-c8b45df80302b9cb7.aspx

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IPI’s 1st Myanmar congress

UN rapporteur and U Ye Htut to speak at conference on the way to media freedom

20 AFFAIRS // in depth

Fishers and farmers have been try-ing for some time to block the pro-posed Don Sahong Dam on the Mekong River in southern Laos.

They recently made their views known at a public consultation on the project but it’s likely their concerns will be ignored and the dam will be built. “Great Gamble on the Mekong,” a new documentary by filmmaker and journalist Tom Fawthrop explores the probable dire consequences of the dam and the failure it would represent for a once-promising extra-legal agency, the Mekong River Commission.

The Mekong rises in the Himalayas in Tibet and flows through Yunnan Province in China and then Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, before en-tering the South China Sea. The latter five Southeast Asian nations form the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB).

Research has shown that the Mekong provides protein and food security for 65 million people in the form of fish for food and trade and water and nutrients for home gardens and farming. At the same time, the Mekong has long represented a potential source of renewable energy. China has built six dams on the upper Mekong and has plans for at least 14 more.

Dams have been discussed and reject-

ed on the lower Mekong since the 1950s, though they have been built since then on its tributaries. In 1995, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam signed the Me-kong Agreement and formed the Mekong River Commission. The goal of the MRC is to facilitate cooperation in managing the resources of the lower Mekong, but it has no final decision-making power.

The proposed Don Sahong Dam would sit across the main channel that migratory fish use to bypass the massive Khone Falls near the Lao border with Cambodia. It would be the second dam on the mainstream of the lower Mekong. In 2012, work began on the controversial Xayaburi Dam in Laos, with as many as 10 to follow.

Cost-benefit analysisThe Lao government and Poyry, the

Finnish company it hired to oversee work on the Xayaburi Dam, claim it will provide clean energy for three million people in Thailand and one million in Laos. The MRC says dams on the mainstream of the lower Mekong have the potential to reduce the severity of floods and droughts and that building all 12 would generate US$15 billion in economic activity, create 400,000 jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a

year by 2030.A study commissioned by the MRC

and completed by the International Center for Environmental Management in 2010 concluded that the 12 dams could meet eight percent of the region’s energy needs by 2025.

However, the ICEM study is clear that benefits will not be disbursed equally: “Mainstream hydropower generation projects would contribute to a growing inequality in the LMB countries. Benefits of hydropower would accrue to electricity consumers using national grids, devel-opers, financiers, and host governments, whereas most costs would be borne by poor and vulnerable riparian communities and some economic sectors. … In the short to medium term poverty would be made worse. …”

Laos says it plans to use revenue earned by selling energy from dams for rural roads, health care and education, though during the “concession period” (estimated by ICEM at 25 years) after dam completion, most of the revenues would go to the dams’ financiers and developers.

Academics and researchers with non-profit groups interviewed by Faw-throp for “Great Gamble on the Mekong” say the impact of the dams is impossible to

A gamble on the Mekong with millions of lives at stakeA proposed dam on the Mekong River in southern Laos would provide energy for the region, but at a significant environmental cost

Nathaniel Eisen 

www.mizzima.com 21

22 AFFAIRS // in depth

predict but will likely be severe.“The Don Sahong Dam will only

push Cambodia and Vietnam closer to a food crisis,” said Mr Chhith Sam Ath, who works for the WWF in Cambodia. In addition to flooding market gardens along the river and diminishing its stock of fish, they predict that the trapping of nutrients by the dams will affect rice production in Vietnam, one of the world’s top exporters of the grain, and lead to high global food prices.

The 2010 ICEM study concluded that building the 11 mainstream dams on the lower Mekong would reduce “capture” (non-farmed) fisheries by 16 percent. Combined with existing and proposed dams on the upper Mekong and on tributaries in the LMB, this number rises to between 26 percent and 42 percent. Aquaculture projects associated with dams would replace no more than 10 percent of this loss.

Laos and the companies involved in building its dams say they can mitigate

fish losses. Poyry claims fish gates will allow 80 percent of migratory fish to pass up and down streams. MegaFirst, the Malaysian company planning to build the Don Sahong Dam claims that making adjoining channels wider and deeper will provide fish with a detour route.

However, the fish gates Poyry plans to use have never been tested on the fish species in the Mekong. The gates need to be designed to take into account the behaviour of individual species and their sensitivity to factors such as oxygen and nutrient levels.

“Whether the fish get across [the dam], you’ll only see when it is built,” Poy-ry’s senior project manager had admitted.

Faulting Laos for not testing the fish gates in the Mekong before building a dam, when you need a dam to test the gates seems unfair. But it could test the technology on a smaller dam on a tribu-tary that would have less impact on the environment.

The political process

In the face of this uncertainty, the ICEM report recommended putting off any mainstream dam construction until 2020 and using the intervening years to more fully study the impact of dams on the upper Mekong and on the tributaries of the lower Mekong. In a five-year strate-gic plan released in March 2011, the MRC Council also recommended more studies, as well as a thorough Procedure of Notifi-cation, Prior Consultation and Agreement (PNPCA), the internal procedure of the MRC for member countries to consider and offer feedback on the proposals of other countries.

Yet eight months later, Poyry said Laos had met its obligations under the 1995 agreement and could proceed with building Xayaburi. A year later, in November 2012, Poyry was awarded an eight-year contract to supervise Xayaburi’s construction and engineering and work on the project began. Poyry claimed at the time that it had updated designs to take into account the concerns of downstream

Many people rely on the Mekong River for fish and trade, including this market seller in Pakse, Laos. Photos: Tom Fawthrop

www.mizzima.com 23

nations.In January 2013, Cambodia and

Vietnam vigorously protested that their concerns had not been addressed and demanded a halt to construction. They were unsuccessful.

A similar drama unfolded around the Don Sahong Dam. Last September, Laos announced the start of the after avoiding a PNPCA by claiming the project was not on the mainstream.

In response to diplomatic pressure, Laos consented to a PNCPA that began last July and was required to take six months. Despite opposition from the gov-ernments and civil society groups in Viet-nam and Cambodia, Laos has signalled its intention to proceed with the dam.

These dams are the first major test of the MRC’s ability to handle conflict among its members. The MRC tasks members with “aiming at arriving at agreement” on projects that have a significant impact on water quality or flow but has no voting mechanism or penalties for not reaching agreement. MRC Secretariat chief execu-

tive officer Hans Guttman says in “Great Gamble” that if the parties cannot reach an agreement, the country proposing a project may proceed with it.

ResistanceCitizens of Cambodia, Thailand, and

Vietnam have lobbied their respective governments to halt the dam. Hundreds of NGOs, local and international (including WWF and International Rivers), have been trying to mobilise the opposition. Thai villagers filed a lawsuit against the state-owned Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, the National Energy Policy Council, and three other government agencies in 2012, challenging the power-purchasing agreement they entered into with the Laos government for electricity from Xayaburi. In June 2014, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court agreed to hear the case.

The international response, apart from the media, has been muted. MRC’s inter-national donors issued a joint statement in January 2013 urging further study before starting work on the dam but have said

little else. The United Nations and heads of state have been notably silent.

Fawthrop’s film does not address how concerned outsiders can respond. The answer certainly feels fraught, given the experience of Laos with French colonial-ism and US military aggression, including the unexploded ordinance that is still causing death and injury. Then there’s the region’s need for clean energy as well as the standard argument about the hypoc-risy of industrialised nations telling any country to sacrifice growth for environ-mental protection.

This is the progressive’s dilemma when it comes to foreign policy. Certainly any intervention should come in the form of carrots and not sticks: money and/or technology to develop less destructive sources of renewable energy; promotion of tourism to the region; UNESCO World Heritage Site recognition for Khone Falls, and so on, conditioned on implementing the ICEM report’s recommendations.

What “Great Gamble on the Mekong” makes clear, and what studies of other massive dam projects have proved, is that this is a humanitarian issue and that the poorest will likely suffer the most.

“Great Gamble on the Mekong” has some distracting elements. The claim that the Thai banks financing the Xayaburi project are “getting nervous” because of letters from anti-dam activists seems like wishful thinking. For the sake of their own credibility, the filmmakers should not have included a cartoon set to Pink Panther music.

Finally, the filmmakers should have addressed how some species came to be endangered before any dams were built. A WWF report, for example, says overfishing was partly responsible for the decline of the giant Mekong catfish. These critiques aside, this is an important and stirring film.

(Nathaniel Eisen is a freelance author interested in the intersections of trade, human rights, security policy and the environment. Information about the doc-umentary “Great Gamble on the Mekong” can be found at www.tomfawthropmedia.com. Copies of the DVD can be ordered from eurekacuba@gmail.com).

“Laughter and honesty are a great way to strengthen relationships, build dialogue and break down barriers, as I have found this

week with my friends from different religions from Burma and Indone-sia,” said Benedict Rogers, author and activist with Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

The Myanmar-Indonesia Interfaith Exchange held at the end of Febru-

ary, organised by Christian Solidar-ity Worldwide and the Communion of Churches in Indonesia, brought together Buddhists, Muslims and Christians from Myanmar and Indone-sia and civil society activists from both countries.

The participants from Myanmar comprised four monks, including the Venerable Ariya Wun Tha Bhiwun Sa, Abbot of Myawaddy Mingyi Monastery in Mandalay (known as Myawaddy

Sayadaw), Venerable Seindida, Abbot of the Asia Alinyang Monastery at Pyin Oo Lwin, and Venerable Ziena, a prominent social media activist monk. The other Myanmar participants included Harry Myo Lin from The Seagull civil society organisation, Khin Thinzar from Smile Education, Kay Thi Oo from the Togetherness Edu-cation Network; Khin Maung Myint (Naeem) from Rohingya political party the National Democratic Party for

24 AFFAIRS // closer look

Interfaith visit to IndonesiaBuilding bridges of understanding through dialogueMarc Jacob

Development, Father Thomas Htang Shan Mong, coordinator of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Myanmar, U Soe Hla, general secretary of the Man-dalay Council of Churches, and Oliver Joseph, assistant program secretary at the Myanmar Council of Churches.

“This trip brought us many advan-tages,” said the Venerable Seindida. “We were able to learn more about the Muslim majority in Indonesia and about religious minorities and had a chance to learn about their situation firsthand. We met many organisa-tions and people working on peace. In particular, we met with Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs – such a meeting would not be possible in Myanmar,” he said.

Venerable Seindida described as “inspiring” the group’s dialogue with the Forum for Inter-Religious Harmo-ny in Jakarta, which included meeting members of former Indonesian presi-dent Abdurrahman Wahid’s family.

“Meeting the Wahid family is very different from meeting the sons or

daughters of leaders in Myanmar; we would really like them to follow the example of the Wahid family, and work for peace,” he said.

“We met a lot of youth and civil society organisations as well, which was wonderful, unfortunately in Myan-mar we do not give space to youth. We need a lot of youth activists and I am inspired and appreciate the example of Indonesian youth. We would like our youth to be like them.”

Venerable Seindida said the group also welcomed opportunities to meet members of Indonesia’s Ahmadiyah Muslim community during visits to Bandung and Bekasi.

“Finally, we had the opportunity to learn more about Indonesian culture, especially music and dance, and it was inspiring to see Indonesian youth pro-moting and protecting their culture,” he said.

“We need to encourage young people in Myanmar to do the same. Finally, our message for Myanmar readers, based on our experiences on this visit - Unless we have peace, we

will never have democracy.”Mr Rogers said his experiences of

Myanmar and Indonesia showed there were many similarities between the two countries.

“Firstly, at a political level, Indo-nesia has undergone a remarkable transition from military-dominated dictatorship to multi-party democracy, a process which Burma is just begin-ning,” said Mr Rogers, author “Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads”, published in 2012.

“Second, both countries are mul-ti-religious and multi-ethnic, but with a dominant majority religion and race,” he said.

“Thirdly, both countries have seen religious intolerance increase in recent years and face challenges around majority-minority relations; violence against religious minorities; impunity, lack of police action, lack of accountability, rule of law; hate speech; discriminatory legislation; and the use of religion for political purposes.”

Mr Rogers said this was why he thought it would be valuable to bring together people from different religious backgrounds in the two countries “to share experiences and ideas about how to address religious intolerance and violations of freedom of religion, to learn from each other and to strength-en efforts in both countries to promote religious pluralism, freedom and harmony.”

The program had been valuable in showing the participants from Myan-mar and Indonesia how similar were their situations and for enabling them to share experiences and ideas that enriched and deepened their under-standing and commitment to values of freedom of religion and inter-faith harmony.

“I hope that they will now go back to their communities and put into action some of the ideas they learned during this exchange and that they will build a regional network of religious freedom and inter-faith activists, to counter religious intolerance in Burma, Indonesia and beyond,” Mr Rogers said.

www.mizzima.com 25

Benedict Rogers (C), of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, with some members of the Myanmar delegation. Photo: Benedict Rogers

upper house panel, stakeholders to discuss education law changes

Stakeholders will be invited to discuss a bill amending the National Education Law with members of a parliamentary committee from March 5 to 15, Upper House Speaker U Khin Aung Myint said on February 24.

The discussions with the Upper House bill committee are due to take place in a hluttaw conference room and follow the agreement at four-party talks to amend the law.

The discussion will include represent-atives of a number of groups, including students who have been campaigning to change the controversial law.  

“We will discuss with lawmakers all the points we would like to see amended,” said Ma Phyo Phyo Aung, a member of one of the most active student groups, the De-mocracy Education Initiative Committee.  

The bill committee will hold separate talks with the Democracy Education Initia-tive Committee, political parties and the National Network for Education Reform, on March 5, 6 and 7, respectively.

The committee will hold meetings with political parties and civil society groups, and aims to finish discussions with advi-sors on the bill on March 15.

A concern of the students and the

NNER is that a draft bill produced by the Education Ministry but rejected during the four-party talks was published in state-run newspapers on February 19. In response, the students and the NNER condemned the move in an open letter to the Education Ministry on February 22.

The government‘s action was “a violation of the agreement reached in the four-party meeting”, the letter said.

At four-party talks on February 16, the government agreed to submit amendments to the law to parliament.kokang self-administered status to stay, says minister  

The government has no plan to change the status of the Kokang region as a self-administered zone, President’s Office Minister U Aung Min said on February 20.

“When the Kokang region has re-gained peace and stability it will retain its status as a self-administered zone,” said U Aung Min.

Martial law was declared in the Kokang region on February 18, nine days after fighting erupted when the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army led by U Pyone Kyar Shin launched a surprise attack on the zone’s capital, Laukkai.

Forces loyal to U Pyone Kyar Shin, who is also known as Peng Jiasheng, were driven out of the region in 2009 during

heavy fighting with the Tatmadaw after they refused to join a proposed border guard force.

Most residents of the region in Shan State bordering China’s Yunnan Province are Han Chinese.

chinese mercenaries face legal action, says tatmadaw

Legal action will be taken against Chi-nese mercenaries arrested in the fighting in Kokang region, a senior Tatmadaw officer said on February 21.

“We have informed the Chinese gov-ernment about the arrest of these merce-naries who will face action in accordance with Myanmar law,” said Lieutenant-Gen-eral Mya Tun Oo from the Office of the Army Chief of Staff.

The Tatmadaw says eight people iden-tified as Chinese mercenaries have arrested during the fighting in the Kokang regional capital, Laukkai.

The Chinese government has denied any involvement in the fighting.

“Even if there indeed were some Chi-nese nationals participating in the fighting, it would only be an individual act, to which the Chinese government is strongly opposed,” a commentary published by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said on February 25.

weapons illegally entering laukkai area, media told

Illegally imported weapons were seized in Laukkai by government forces during the fighting in the town, senior Tatmadaw officer Lieutenant-General Mya Tun Oo told a news conference on February 22.

“A total of 115 weapons was seized during fighting in residential areas of Laukkai,” Lt-Gen Mya Tun Oo said.

He said the fighting included attacks launched against Tatmadaw units by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army.

He also said that a border guard force had on December 15 confiscated 611 guns, 126,000 rounds of ammunition, 300 40-mm rocket launchers and more than 1,000 rockets and had arrested three suspects.

Lt-Gen Myo Tun Oo said the Kokang rebels, who are Han Chinese, were report-ed to be receiving assistance from people of the same ethnic group who live in a neighbouring country.

26 AFFAIRS // lAst week in nAy pyi tAw

Last week in Nay Pyi Taw

www.mizzima.com 27

28 BUSINESS // closer look

Another piece of cross-border electricity cooperation in Southeast Asia is moving into place in a jigsaw of develop-

ment projects that could ultimately benefit Myanmar.

The latest regional interconnectivity link involves transmission lines nearing completion on Borneo and linking Ma-laysia’s Sarawak State and Indonesia’s West Kalimantan Province.

The link, carrying hydroelectric power from the 2,400 megawatt Bakun Dam in the Sarawak jungle, will be the second per-manent cross-border electricity connection in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The other permanent exchange of electricity across borders in ASEAN is from Vietnam to Cambodia, where new connectivity is creating thousands of jobs.

The trans-Borneo power grid is 80 per-cent complete and on schedule, delegates were told at a meeting attended by Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines in Kuala Lumpur on February 17.

The cross-border link, backed by loans totalling almost US$100 million, consists of two transmission lines of about 142 miles (230 kilometres), plus minor distrib-utors and sub-stations.

“For West Kalimantan, the power system will help improve the quality and reliability of power supply, lower its cost

and diversify the energy generation port-folio by retiring old, inefficient oil-based power plants,” reported the Malaysian news agency, Bernama.

Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are working to optimise regional power resources to improve their economic development, Bernama said, quoting Syed Mohamad Fauzi Shahab, the director of electricity at the Sarawak Public Utilities Ministry.

The aim is to eventually connect Indo-nesia’s five provinces on Kalimantan and those of Sulawesi, Maluku and West Papua, with Sarawak and Sabah states in Malaysia, Brunei, and the big islands of Mindanao and Palawan in the Philippines.

This will be one-way traffic with energy-rich Sarawak exporting its surplus power. Kalimantan is rich in coal and potentially large volumes of methane gas but has poor infrastructure, while eastern Indonesia and much of the Philippines have few known energy resources and are desperately short of electricity.

With the Sarawak-Kalimantan electricity link nearing completion, the so-called BIMP initiative, comprising Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, is preparing a feasibility study on further power connections, said Mr Syed.

The study’s finding will be presented to an ASEAN energy ministers’ meeting in November.

There have been other cross-border exchanges of electricity in ASEAN but they were short-term solutions to sudden ener-gy shortfalls. They have occurred between Singapore and Malaysia and Malaysia and Thailand.

Undeveloped Cambodia, one of ASE-AN’s poorest countries, is receiving perma-nent electricity supplies from neighbouring Vietnam which have begun to spawn clusters of light industry that have created 10,000 jobs, said the Asian Development Bank, which backed the project.

ASEAN energy interconnectivity: How Myanmar could benefitGordon Brown

Almost 124 miles (200km) of trans-mission lines have been built from the Vi-etnamese side of the border to provide grid electricity to Cambodia’s southern Kampot Province and further east to Sihanoukville, on the Gulf of Thailand.

“Two projects supported by ADB helped changed the equation in Kampot, providing reliable, affordable energy to businesses and to tens of thousands of poor rural households who had never enjoyed electricity in their homes,” the ADB said in a statement.

One cross-border possibility that could benefit Myanmar in the medium term is a surge of hydroelectric projects in Laos.

With a population of less than ten million, Laos is building more electricity generating capacity than it needs. In the short term much of this is destined for Thailand, but it would not be difficult for Myanmar to also tap into this energy source via grid interconnectivity – once eastern Myanmar’s infrastructure has been improved.

The Thai authorities are tapping the

hydroelectric potential of Laos because of public opposition in Thailand to dam building – an issue that is also controversial in Myanmar.

These grid-connecting lines are part of the Greater Mekong Subregion Trans-mission Project that groups the ASEAN countries through which the Mekong flows – Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The interconnectivity on Borneo is supported by the ADB with a loan of almost US$49.5 million, plus a matching

Photo: Yemin

www.mizzima.com 29

30 AFFAIRS // closer look

loan from France’s Française de Dévelop-ment.

Indonesia’s state power company PLN estimated last year that the electricity from Sarawak would reduce its annual oil bill by $100 million a year, but that was before crude prices collapsed.

Indonesia and Malaysia are coop-erating on another cross-border energy project, but in the other direction.

Malaysia’s Sarawak State is energy rich but peninsular Malaysia is increasingly suffering from power shortages as demand outstrips supply. Sarawak is on the verge of selling surplus electricity from Bukun to Indonesia because initial plans to transmit the dam’s electricity by undersea cable to the Malaysian peninsula were abandoned as too costly to build and maintain across hundreds of miles of ocean.

Instead, Malaysia plans to import electricity from Indonesia’s Sumatra island across a section of the Malacca Strait that

is only about 30 miles (50km) wide. This $2 billion cooperation project involves the state power companies, Tenaga Nasional of Malaysia and Indonesia’s PLN, as well as the Indonesian state-owned coal miner, Bukit Asam.

The ambitious plan for the project in-cludes building a coal mine with a capacity of 6 million tonnes a year at Peranap, in Sumatra’s Riau Province, plus a coal-fired power plant with a capacity of 1,200 MW. The electricity it generates will be shared between the two power firms and a swap system via cable under the strait.

However, as is often the case in Indo-nesia, elements of the project have stalled due to licensing and finance issues, and it is doubtful that it will be completed on target in 2017. The undersea cable is still in the planning stage.

However, despite sometimes crushing bureaucracy, cross-border energy cooper-

ation among ASEAN countries is positive and increasing.

The trend is being driven by two fac-tors: need and the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community, or AEC, a tar-iff-free and open labour economic market.

The official start-up date is the end of this year but it is doubtful that all the ele-ments of the AEC will be finalised by then.

There is a wide economic development gap between, for example, Myanmar and Singapore, but all ten ASEAN countries are keen to cooperate.

All ten countries, with the exception of Singapore, share a common need regard-less of economic status: demand for more electricity.

Southeast Asia is far from the kind of interconnectivity discussed when ASEAN ministers meet and make grandiose state-ments, but the jigsaw is definitely taking shape.

The Debate

How troubled is Myanmar’s relationship with China?

When public debate heats up Mizzima reviews the landscape of opinion and prints the most poignant quotes in favour and against.

“Regarding the allegations about China’s involvement in the conflict in the Kokang region, I am of the view that China is not likely to be involved in Myanmar organisations and their affairs.”

u than naing soe (writer) “Even if the Beijing government was not involved in the

Kokang conflict, it’s my assumption that the Yunnan provin-cial government and other governments are involved in it. The Myanmar government and military have hinted about this and an interview with [Kokang rebel leader] Phon Kya Shin in a magazine influenced by the Chinese government has strengthened this suspicion.”

u kyaw swa Moe – (editor, the irrawaddy)

“China is expected to become a ‘Super Power’ in the late 21st century surpassing the United States.”

u than naing soe (writer) “In my opinion, China would not become a ‘Super

Power’ at that time [late 21st century]. It has some splits in party affairs and the poverty rate in some of its provinces is still quite considerable. In this situation, if Myanmar could address internal problems, it is likely to bow low to China.”

dr Min nyo (political scientist)

“The ability to speak Chinese is a necessity for border trade in Shan and Kachin states. Chinese Yuan is also essen-tial. So, locals have to go to Chinese temples to learn their language for doing business.”

daw nan yaw (peace activist)

“The suspension of the Myitsone dam project during transition period in Myanmar has amazed China. They made some reforms in foreign policy with Myanmar. Chinese officials met and discussed with political forces. They took part as observers in peace talks. These are some remarkable changes of Chinese government.”

u Zeya thu (deputy chief editor, the Voice)

“Myanmar is a loser in bilateral relations with China. More oil and gas pipeline projects and railway construction projects will roll into the country. Although Myanmar needs to adhere to agreements, the Myanmar government should have a clear policy on unfair projects.”

u than naing soe (writer)

(Mizzima acknowledges with thanks permission from DVB to use comments made during its debate on China-Myanmar relations broadcast on February 28).

www.mizzima.com 31

32 BUSINESS // flight schedules

Yangon to Singaporedays flight dep Ar Daily 8M-231 12:45 17:10 Daily Y5 233 10:10 14:40Daily SQ 997 10:35 15:10Daily 3K 582 11:20 15:50Thurs, Sat MI 533 13:45 20:50Daily MI 517 16:40 21:15Daily TR 2827 19:06 23:40Yangon to Bangkokdays flight dep Ar Daily 8M-335 07:40 09:25 Daily 8M-331 16:30 18:15 Daily PG 706 6:15 8:30Daily TG 304 9:50 11:45Daily PG 702 10:30 12:25Daily TG 302 14:55 16:50Daily PG 708 15:20 17:15Daily PG 704 18:20 20:15Daily TG 306 19:45 21:45Daily DD4231 8:00 9:50Daily FD 252 8:30 10:15Daily FD 254 17:30 19:10Daily DD 4239 21:00 22:45Yangon to Kuala Lumpurdays flight dep Ar Mon,Wed, 8M-501 07:50 11:50Fri,Sat Daily AK 505 8:30 12:50Daily MH 741 12:15 16:30Daily 8M 9506 12:15 16:30Daily 8M 9508 15:45 20:05Daily MH 743 15:45 20:05Wed, Sat AK 503 19:30 23:45Yangon to Guanzhoudays flight dep Ar Tue,Thu,Sun 8M-711 08:40 13:15 Wed, Sat CZ 3056 11:25 16:15Mon, Fri CZ 3056 17:30 22:15

Yangon to Gayadays flight dep Ar Wed,Fri,Sat 8M-601 07:00 08:20 Yangon to Incheonday fligt dep Ar Daily 8M-7702 23:35 08:05 Thu,Sun 8M-7502 00:35 09:10 Yangon to Bejingday flight dep Ar Mon, Wed, CA 716 23:50 05:50+1 Fri, SunYangon to Kunmingday flight dep Ar Daily CA 906 12:15 15:55Wed MU 2012 12:20 18:25

Daily, except Wed MU 2032 14:50 18:20Yangon to Hanoiday flight dep Ar Mon, Wed, VN 956 19:10 21:30 Fri, Sat, SunYangon to Ho Chi Minh Cityday flight dep Ar Tue, Thurs, Sun VN 946 14:25 17:15 Yangon to Dohaday flight dep Ar Mon, Thurs, Sat QR 919 8:00 11:10 Yangon to Seoulday flight dep Ar Thurs, Sun OZ 770 0:35 9:10 Daily KE 472 23:35 7:50Yangon to Hong Kongday flight dep Ar Daily KA 251 01:10 05:45Yangon to Tokyoday flight dep Ar Daily NH 914 21:45 06:50+1Yangon to Dhakaday flight dep Ar Thurs 8G 061 19:45 21:00Mond BG 061 21:45 23:00Mandalay to Bangkokday flight dep Ar Daily PG710 14:05 16:30Mon, Tue, FD 245 12:45 15:00Thurs, SatMandalay to Singaporeday flight dep Ar Thurs, Sat MI 533 15:55 20:50Daily YG 233 8:05 14:40Mandalay to Kunmingday flight dep Ar Daily MU 2030 14:40 17:30Mandalay to Gayaday flight dep Ar Thurs 8M 603 11:10 12:15Nay Pyi Taw to Bangkokday flight dep Ar Mon, Tue, PG 722 19:30 22:30Wed, Thurs, FriBangkok to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily TG 303 7:55 8:50Daily PG 701 8:50 9:40Daily 8M 336 10:40 11:25Daily TG 301 13:00 13:55Daily PG 707 13:40 14:30Daily PG 703 16:45 17:35Daily TG 305 17:50 18:45Daily 8M 332 19:15 20:00Daily PG 705 20:15 21:30

Daily DD 4230 6:20 7:05Daily FD 251 7:15 8:00Daily FD 253 16:20 17:00Daily DD 4238 19:30 20:15

Singapore to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily SQ 998 7:55 9:20Daily 3K 581 8:50 10:30Thur, Sat MI 533 11:35 12:55 Daily MI 518 14:20 15:45Daily TR 2826 17:05 18:25Daily Y5 234 15:35 17:05Daily 8M 232 18:15 19:40Kuala Lumpur to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily AK 504 6:55 8:00Daily MH 740 10:05 11:15Daily 8M 9505 10:05 11:15Mon,Fri 8M 502 12:50 13:50Daily 8M 9507 13:30 14:40Daily MH 742 13:30 14:40Daily AK 502 17:50 19:00Beijing to Yangonday flight dep ArMon,Wed,Fri,Sun CA 715 19:30 22:50Guangzhou to Yangonday flight dep ArWed, Sat CZ 3055 8:40 10:25Mon, Fri CZ 3055 14:40 16:30Tue,Thu, Sun 8M 712 14:15 15:50Tapei to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily CI 7915 7:00 9:55

Kunming to Yangonday flight dep ArWed MU 2011 8:25 8:55Daily CA 905 10:45 11:15Mon,Tue,Thur, MU 2031 13:30 14:00Fri, Sat, Sun

Hanoi to Yangonday flight dep ArMon,Wed,Fri, VN957 16:50 18:10Sat,SunHo Chi Min City to Yangonday flight dep ArTue,Thur,Sun VN 943 11:50 13:25Doha to Yangonday flight dep ArWed, Fri,Sun QR 918 20:20 6:25+1Pnom Penh to Yangonday flight dep ArMon, Wed, Sat 8M 9006 16:00 17:30

International Flight Schedules

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www.mizzima.com 33

Seoul to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily KE 471 18:45 22:35Wed, Sat 0Z 769 19:50 23:25Hong Kong to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily KA 250 21:45 23:30Tokyo to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily NH 913 11:00 15:40Gaya to Yangonday flight dep ArWed,Fri,Sat 8M 602 9:20 12:30Dhaka to Yangonday flight dep ArThur BG 060 16:30 18:45Mon BG 060 18:30 20:45Incheon to Yangonday flight dep ArDaily 8M7701 18:45 22:35Wed,Sat 8M 7501 19:50 23:25Bangkok to Mandalay

day flight dep ArDaily PG 709 12:00 13:20Mon,Tue,Thur,Sat FD 244 10:50 12:15

Singapore to Mandalayday flight dep ArThur, Sat MI 533 11:35 15:00Daily Y5 234 15:35 18:55Kunming to Mandalayday flight dep ArDaily MU 2029 13:55 16:35Mon,Wed,Fri MU 7524 18:20 21:00Gaya to Mandalayday flight dep ArThur 8M 604 13:15 16:20Bangkok to Nay Pyi Tawday flight dep ArMon,Tue,Wed, PG 721 17:00 19:00Thur,Fri

Airline codes3K = Jet Star8M = Myanmar Airways InternationalAK and FD = Air AsiaBG = Biman Bangladesh AirlinesCA = Air ChinaCI = China AirlinesCZ = China SouthernDD = Nok AirlineKA = Dragon AirKE = Korea AirlinesMI = Silk AirMU = China Eastern AirlinesNH = All Nippon AirwaysPG = Bangkok AirwaysQR = Qatar AirwaysSQ = Singapore AirwaysTG = Thai AirwaysTR = Tiger AirlineVN = Vietnam, AirlinesY5 = Golden Myanmar Airlines

Mizzima cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies in this data.

34 AFFAIRS // interView34 CULTURE // in focus

www.mizzima.com 35

Shinbyu festival celebrates joining the SanghaA woman carrying her grandson with a yellow costume at the Shinbyu festival near Bago, Dite Oo Township on February 28, 2015. Myanmar Buddhists believe that every boy should at least at one point in his life become a novice monk. Typically, boys are inducted through the novitiation ceremony and remain monks for a short period. Photo: Hong Sar (Ramonya)

www.mizzima.com 35

36 CULTURE // trAVel

In conjunction with an invitation to attend the ASEAN Tourism Forum in Nay Pyi Taw at the end of January, I decided to take a

long-awaited and planned overland trip to southern Myanmar to explore and survey a “Buddha Land” region with a myriad of golden glittering pagodas.

To reach the most southernmost point of Myanmar opposite Ranong in southern Thailand, I flew from Bang-kok to Ranong after getting a 28-day tourist visa at the Myanmar embassy in the Thai capital (1,035 baht).

Ranong, the capital of the province of the same name, is about 600 kilo-metres south of Bangkok and 300km north of Phuket. Cascading down from the rainforest mountain slopes on the eastern side of the province are several waterfalls and hot mineral springs for

people to relax and rejuvenate. Caves abound, while in the west is the man-grove- fringed coast of the Andaman Sea sprinkled with dozens of islands, including Koh Chang. Tourism is becoming an important industry in the province, after tin mining, forestry and fishery.

After overnighting in the town, I took a tuk tuk (20 baht) to the port and after clearing immigration I was directed to a boat that for a fare of 100 baht ferries passengers across the Pak Chan River, to the southernmost Myanmar town of Kawthaung. The boat passed an island in the river with a standing statue of Kuan Yim before we disembarked at Strand Road within half an hour of leaving the port of Ranong.

Next to Kawthaung’s busy Myoma Pier is the Immigration checkpoint.

The staff are welcoming and give advice on accommodation. They rec-ommended the Penguin Hotel where I took a single room for 400 baht. I used the afternoon to go sightseeing and took a “moto taxi” to the top of a hill that affords a view of the town and its big market.

Old wooden houses abound and the many examples of colonial archi-tecture include a clock tower. On top of the hill is the golden Pyi Daw Aye Pagoda and breathtaking views of the town and surrounding area.

 Another sight worth seeing is Bayint Naung Point, formerly called Victoria Point, where in a park a short walk from town is a bronze statue

Discovering the Golden Land: A journey in southern Myanmar Reinhard Hohler

of King Bayint Naung (who reigned 1551-1581).

 At an office on Strand Road I booked a ticket for a speed boat trip early the next morning to Myeik (US$45) and had a “fried squid” dinner at the popular Smile Restaurant. There are yachts for hire that take travellers from Kawthaung to explore the 800-is-land Myeik Archipelago, for which you need a permit. Most trips are for five days and include stops at villages of the Moken people, sometimes referred to as “sea gypsies”, who depend on the sea for their livelihood.

 The Hifi Express speed boat left Myoma Pier at 4.30am for the six-hour journey along the rugged coast to Mye-

ik. It is a compact town built around a hill with an elongated island just off-shore. I was greeted on Strand Road by a German-speaking guide called James Bond who led me to the new Royal Myeik Guesthouse, where I checked in for three nights ($13 a night).

 Myeik is a busy port town and is well-known for its booming fishing and pearl farming industries and trade in birds’ nest. There’s a huge dock on the Tanintharyi River, about 20km north of the north, where big fishing vessels are built and repaired. In the area around the central market, which is closed on Sunday, is an interesting range of buildings, including mosques, British colonial architecture, Mon-style

wooden houses and the old villas of Chinese merchants. Myeik was once part of the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya and a British freebooter, Admiral Sam-uel White, exported elephants from the city to India. His adventures are fea-tured in a book by the British author Maurice Collis called “Siamese White”, that is recommended reading for those interested in the town’s history.

 Myeik is dominated by the golden spire of the impressive Thein Daw Gyi Pagoda and its hilltop site is a treasure house of local arts. The pagoda plat-form is a fine vantage point to watch a beautiful sunset. A pleasant way to end your day is the night market on Strand Road where you can enjoy excellent lo-

www.mizzima.com 37

Sunset on the beach in the Myeik archipelago. Photo: aX

cal food and the drinks options include “avocado” fruit shakes.

 Other attractions in and around Myeik are the Shwethalyaung reclining Buddha image on Pahtaw Pahtet Island opposite the port. In town is an old British clock tower, a statue of Bogyoke Aung San and the Independence Mon-ument. There is also Roman Catholic church dating to the 18th century. On the eastern periphery of the town are the Myeik University , Myeik Golf Course and the airport, with flights to Kawthaung, Dawei, Mawlamyaing and Yangon. A new road is being planned that will travel east via the old town of Tanintharyi and across the moun-tains to Mawdaung and the border checkpoint at Singkhon in Thailand’s Prachuap Khiri Khan Province. When the road is built it will provide a link to Myeik from southern Thailand.

 There were no speed boats travel-ling the 250km north from Myeik to the Tanintharyi Region capital, Dawei, because of bad weather so I opted for

a local bus which cost $8. The bus departed at 3am from the new Hotel Grand Jade and took eight hours to reach Dawei. The road, which is still being built in places, winds through a scenic mountainous region and passes rubber and oil palm plantations and tiny villages surrounded by betel and coconut palms.

 Dawei is on a river of the same name and is some distance from the open sea. There is no river front and only a few houses near a fish market. The speed boats from Myeik ($25 a head) take four hours to reach the port that serves Dawei. The bus ride to the town takes about an hour. Dawei is protected from the sea by a long peninsula at the end of which is a cape graced by the Shwe Maw Taung Pagoda.

 Accompanied in a tuk tuk by two young German backpackers, we travelled to the town centre, where we took nice rooms in the Garden Hotel [$13, including breakfast]. We discov-

ered that Dawei is an interesting town to explore on foot and stayed for four nights. On my first stroll through the laidback town I met a German entre-preneur who plans to establish a travel agency in Dawei because of its future tourism potential. He told me that Thai and foreign tourists were already using a road that heads east to a border checkpoint at Htee Khee, about 170km away. From the border the road leads to Kanchanaburi and beyond to Bang-kok. We dined together that evening at a Thai restaurant called Joy House.

The next day, after a visit to an internet café, I had lunch in a pleasant beer garden in the grounds of a old colonial guesthouse named Pale Eikari. Its owner, U Kyaw Win, is building a seven-storey hotel next door and wants to use the guesthouse as its restaurant.

That afternoon I visited the big town market before proceeding to the Dawei tourist office where staff officer, U Thet Naing Htwe, briefed me on plans for the ambitious deep-sea port

38 CULTURE // trAVel

Local boat building. Photo: aX

www.mizzima.com 39

and special economic zone about 50km north of Dawei which will surely have a social and environmental impact on the region. The plan calls for Dawei to be the western end of an east-west cor-ridor linking southern Myanmar with Thailand and southern Vietnam. 

On January 14, we joined an organ-ised tour ($25 a head) to the nearby peninsula and travelled a rough road through dusty villages and markets to a lonely fishing village on the Andaman Sea coast. In the afternoon we enjoyed a boat ride to pristine beaches where we snorkelled and swam in crys-tal-clear water. We had the beach to ourselves and it was wonderful. After quenching our thirst with a coconut we took the four-hour return journey back to Dawei.  

On the last day of our stay, we vis-ited the beach paradise of Maung Ma Kan, which is about 17km from Dawei and said to be one of the most beauti-ful beaches on the Andaman coast. The water is crystal clear and tranquil, like a pond. In a restaurant called “Love Angel” we had a Thai-style papaya sal-ad, washed down with Myanmar Beer. A spectacular sunset mirrored strange colours in the water. Along the long beach are palm huts used by fishermen whom you can watch hauling in their catch. A short distance away, towards stony hills, is the Myaw Yit Pagoda.

A must-see attraction in Dawei

is the centrally-located Shwe Taung Sar Pagoda in the compound with the town’s highest zedi, as well as monas-tery buildings and a Buddhist muse-um. Exhibits in the museum include ancient jewellery and pottery found in the area that are cited as evidence that Dawei was a Pyu city in the 8th centu-ry. Inscribed brick foundations at the former city of Thargaya, now Dawei Myohaung village, have led researchers to conclude that the Pyu people settled in the area.

We left Dawei by train, bound for the Mon State capital, Mawlamyaing, and eventually, Yangon.  We travelled upper class for K6,050 on a train that departed Dawei at 5.40am. The scenery ranged from salt farms and then paddy fields, to mountainous terrain with thick bamboo forests. There were many boulders topped with golden chedis. The train was boarded by a security de-tail of soldiers before we reached Yeh, a reminder that this part of Myanmar was unsafe until recently and off-limits to tourists. We arrived in Yeh at 2pm, which was just enough time for lunch before we boarded a train to Maw-lamyaing, where we arrived at 8.30pm. 

I farewelled my new German friends, who were continuing their journey north, took a moto-taxi to the Breeze Guesthouse on Strand Road ($8 a night) and had a late seafood dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Thanl-

win (Salween) River. My itinerary the next day included a visit to the Mon Cultural Museum to buy a translation of the “Chronicle of the Mons”. Then I strolled to the U Zin Pagoda and the famous Kyaik Tan Lan Pagoda, which has relics of the Lord Buddha. This is the region described by the Mon as Suvannabhumi, or “Golden Land”, and it includes gilded pagodas at Thaton, Bago and even in Yangon. 

Before leaving Mawlamyaing, I revisited the Mon Cultural Muse-um to make copies of old gazetteers about Dawei and Myeik in its library. I travelled upper class on the night train from Mawlamyaing to Yangon (K4,250), departing at 10pm and arriv-ing in the commercial capital via Bago the next day at 7.30am.

I checked in to the Ocean Pearl III Guesthouse ($20 a night] and lost no time visiting some of Yangon’s finest attractions. They included the Botahtaung Pagoda on the Yangon River, the golden Sule Pagoda near the City Hall and the marvellous spectacle of the huge, shimmering chedi of the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most revered of all the Buddhist sites in Myanmar.

On January 22 I caught a flight to Nay Pyi Taw to attend the ASEAN Tourism Forum. It took place from January 22 to 29 and will be another story.

Life often revolves around the sea and the seafood markets. Photos: aX

I t’s the 64 million dollar ques-tion. And it comes in the week that Myanmar celebrates Inter-national Women’s Day and the

year when The Lady should by all indications receive the crown.

But when the truth is laid bare, all is not well with women’s rights and politics in Myanmar in this critical year when the country goes to the polls.

Everybody claps The Myanmar Girls – as they will do during the Yangon Women’s Festival that runs from March 2 to 8 – pretty and

tuneful singers in a largely patriarchal society. Yet, as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi made clear there is a long way to go to bring necessary change.

Achieving gender equality is among the many challenges Myan-mar must face during its democratic transition, she told an international Women’s Forum Myanmar in Nay Pyi Taw last December. She said she de-plored the low percentage of women parliamentarians in Myanmar, saying it was the lowest of any member country of the Association of South-east Asian Nations.

40 DEVELOPMENT // closer look

Women’s development lags in crucial yearMarc Jacob

www.mizzima.com 41

42 DEVELOPMENT // closer look

“We need to promote the par-ticipation of women in politics, not for the sake of statistics, not just to say that we have so many MPs in the legislature and so many women min-isters, but because we need to give more to the process of democratisa-tion,” the chairperson of the National League for Democracy said.

“I think we should think of our role as not trying to get places for ourselves or trying to get our own rights but trying to give, to give what we can toward the process of transi-tion,” she said.

“Overly optimistic” was her assessment about gender equality in Myanmar culture.

According to a report released after the Eighth Congress of the Wor-men’s League of Burma, the human rights situation for women remains dire in areas of conflict.

Because of the more than 60-year long civil war between the govern-ment’s  army and ethnic groups, women in our country are living in an extremely vulnerable situation with lack of personal safety.

The renewed fighting in Kachin State and northern Shan State under the current government led by U

Thein Sein has worsened human rights situation of women, escalating incidents of sexual violence against women by the military, according to the WLB.

“WLB also sees that the women’s protection laws drafted by the U Thein Sein government are inten-tionally dividing the women in the country. WLB seriously think the women in Burma should be aware of these tactics and motives.”

On a recent visit by British Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone in her capacity as the UK’s champion for tackling violence against women and girls overseas, she told media she heard first-hand about the discrimi-nation and violence felt by women.

“This is often as a direct result of conflict which has caused widespread displacement, especially in Kachin and Rakhine states,” she said.

“For women in Burma, the baseline is very low, but things have improved and I am certain they will continue to do so due to the tremen-dous energy and ability of gender and peace activists in civil society that I was fortunate to meet with during my visit,” Ms Featherstone said.

The Yangon Women’s Festival

sought to look on the brighter side, putting on a celebration of the many achievements. Throughout a week of visual arts exhibitions, music concerts, movie screenings and workshops, the festival is creating a platform to expose and advertise women’s contributions and voices in today’s society.

The Yangon Women’s Festival is an event dedicated to inspire and cel-ebrate women’s achievements in My-anmar, according to the organizers’ website. According to the organizers, women in Myanmar have always been at the forefront for society and politi-cal progress. Throughout the coun-try’s history, women from all regions and denominations have played key roles in the country’s successes. With-in media, movies, education, business or politics, women are increasingly influential and encouraging changes in society.

However, as women’s contribu-tions gain increasing recognition, cultural and political norms still combine to give them limited power and quiet dissenting voices in the dis-cussion of discrimination or equality issues.

www.mizzima.com 43

The Myanmar government and the Asian Development Bank have signed an US$80 mil-lion [K80 billion] loan agree-

ment to rehabilitate a major road to support economic development in the agriculturally rich but underdeveloped Ayeyarwaddy Delta region, according to a press release February 10.

The agreement to upgrade the Maubin-Phyapon road was signed by U Maung Maung Win, Director General of the Treasury Department of the Finance Ministry, and Mr Winfried Wicklein, ADB Country Director for Myanmar.

U Kyaw Lin, Managing Director of Public Works of the Ministry of

Construction, and other senior officials from the government ministries, as well as ADB officials witnessed the signing.

“The rehabilitation of the road will improve connectivity and reduce travel times in the delta and we believe it will have a high impact on the development of the region,” said U Kyaw Lin.

Lack of investment in road main-tenance over the decades and the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis in 2008 have left the road network in the delta in poor condition, undermin-ing economic and social development. Upgrading the network is now seen as a high priority.

“Cash crops and the production of high value seafood in the delta are

not yet viable industries as the poor condition of the existing road network makes it difficult for products to reach markets,” said Mr Wicklein.

“Rehabilitation of this road will improve access to markets and help the otherwise productive agricultural areas of the delta realize their full economic potential,” he said.

In addition to the rebuilding of the road, the loan will be used to provide training and other capacity-building support to the Ministry of Construc-tion to strengthen its project develop-ment capabilities. [Mizzima]

ADB provides loan for Maubin-Phyapon road upgrade

Photo: hein htet

44 DEVELOPMENT // interView

How can journalists reconcile the need to share informa-tion with the danger that the news they report could po-

tentially incite violence or spread panic?Pakistani media professional Ms

Puruesh Chaudhary and others will address that question at the International Press Institute’s 2015 World Congress and General Assembly from March 27 to 29 in Yangon during the panel discussion “Straight Talk – The Ethical Coverage of Crises and Emergencies.”

The founder and president of Agahi, a network of journalists and media professionals in Pakistan, Ms Chaudhary has worked for nearly a decade in media and strategic communications and serves as Center for International Media Ethics ambassador to Pakistan. She recently shared her thoughts with IPI about responsible information sharing and the challenges journalists face when releas-ing information.

 ipi: have you been to Myanmar before? As you prepare for ipi’s 2015 world congress, what do you expect and is there anything you hope to learn?

Chaudhary: I have never been to My-anmar. [I’m quite] glad to have received a speaker invitation. In Pakistan, we sel-dom hear of journalism-related challeng-

es, opportunities and tech advancements from East Asia. The sessions in Yangon will give me an opportunity to connect with journalists and media development professionals from the region. Areas of interest are content credibility, hate speech and religion. I look forward to the discussions around these subjects – and I am hoping that we would mutually benefit from ideas exchanged, relation-ships built during the World Congress.

ipi: Journalists face many issues in the field, but what crucial challenges do crisis and emergency reporters face in reporting without inciting further violence?

Chaudhary: Having worked and trained journalists in Pakistan, I can safely ascertain that the media industry does not invest in professional develop-ment in terms of capacity building and training opportunities for their human resource. Since the beginning of the war on terror, we saw journalists losing lives as their respective organizations failed to provide adequate security training, safety equipment and flak- or bullet-proof jackets.

These days, the media in the country is grappling with the challenge of not be-ing able to put across hate speech on-air; those that do, suffer immense backlash on social media. A unique voice is being

heard from the first time that contests the dichotomy between journalism in its truest manifestation and ethical respon-sibility.... This is an encouraging trend that somehow washes away the expected role of the country’s electronic regulator, making it look weak and incompetent.   

ipi: some claim that media – by over-whelming people with information that fails to deliver a deeper under-standing – can desensitize them and create a space for intolerance. do you see any trends in journalism aimed at combating this, and how does that translate to covering crises and emergencies?

Chaudhary: During the war on terror, we did witness a high degree of insensitivity, generally towards suicide attacks, the rampant broadcast of terror-ists’ narrative, sectarian killing. This last decade had somehow mellowed public sentiment until December 16, 2014, when more than 130 children were killed point blank or butchered within a few hours in broad daylight [in Peshawar]. Following that, the government of Paki-stan announced a National Action Plan, something that should’ve taken place 10 years ago. 

[The plan includes points on countering hate speech and extremist material, banning the glorification of

Media professional speaks on responsible information sharingMizzima

www.mizzima.com 45

terrorism in media and combating the abuse of online media in connection with terrorism].

One of the trends we have seen is public agitation [against] intolerance and hate speech being broadcasted, which now is also moving in on the vernacu-lar print media. Naming and shaming seems to be key here. Pressure from civil society and the public mounts each time there is a violation of any of [those] three points. This is perhaps a slight contribution towards self-censorship and self-regulation. Still, there’s enough space to be covered for sensitising journalists on crisis or conflict reporting.

ipi: your organization, Agahi, focus-es in part on training journalists for fieldwork in crises. how do you help develop journalists’ capacities to report on crises? 

Chaudhary: Pakistan is quite an intense country, so to speak; which makes it not only challenging but equally exciting. One thing we advocate in all

of our training sessions is “Life Before a Story: Committed to journalism? Or committed to surviving...?”

Our training modules for conflict ar-eas do not encourage journalists to cover conflict in its face, but we help them dig out stories which otherwise hardly make it to either a rundown or a back-page, strengthening the relationship between a journalist and his or her editor. Our training programmes mostly cover socio-economic indicators and ethical benchmarks. This enables a journalist to construct a news story on a given technical framework, while making it relevant for not only the local but also the international audience. 

ipi: Agahi also focuses on creating media pluralism. what developments in terms of that have you seen in pakistan in recent years and have you seen similar developments in other countries?

Chaudhary: Agahi’s industry-de-velopment initiatives on encouraging

pluralism, accuracy and diversity include the Agahi Awards, a recognition plat-form for journalists all across Pakistan for producing best content, and the content evaluation framework to assess the entries covers diversity, pluralism and ethics. They also include the Media Credibility Index, another content evaluation and delivery tool [developed] in collaboration with Mishal Pakistan, which assesses current affairs anchors and programming for competence, ethics, accuracy, balance, timeliness and fairness.

There are several training and development efforts for the journalists, yet little is done at the industry level. So while there is breadth of professional ex-perience contributing towards the Agahi Awards and the Media Credibility Index, nothing similar is happening, at least in the region. This opens a new gateway for collaboration across borders in terms of development initiatives.

*This interview has been edited and condensed by IPI.

Ms Puruesh Chaudhary, second right, with colleagues in Islamabad, Pakistan

46 AFFAIRS // news

China has denied allegations of involvement in the fighting in Kokang region in an official commentary that reminded

Nay Pyi Taw of Beijing’s contribution to Myanmar’s “leapfrog economic develop-ment” in recent years.

Published by state-run Xinhua news-agency on February 25 under a heading that said the unrest was detrimental to China’s interests, the commentary said the allegations “cannot hold water”.

The publication of the commentary came after senior Tatmadaw officer Lieu-tenant-General Mya Htun Oo was quoted as telling journalists in Nay Pyi Taw on February 22 that the Kokang rebels were being assisted by Chinese mercenaries.

“Proximity and ethnicity” had created misleading speculations about Chinese involvement in the conflict, the com-mentary said, in an apparent reference to the large Han Chinese population in the Kokang region.

It said that as well as harming China’s national interests, “should Beijing thrust itself into the Kokang fighting”, Chinese involvement in the conflict would violate its basic foreign policy principle.

“China upholds non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, let alone military intervention,” the commentary said, adding that China had always respected Myanmar’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“Even if there indeed were some Chinese nationals participating in the fighting, it would be only an individual act, to which the Chinese government is strongly opposed,” it said.

“As Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying has said, Beijing will never allow any organisation or individual to use Chinese territory to undermine China-Myanmar relations or border tranquility.”

It would be unreasonable for China to foment unrest in a close neighbour which could spread to its own soil, said the commentary, noting that a “large number” of Myanmar refugees had already fled to Yunnan Province.

“Were the violence to persist, the influx would only continue and pose a graver challenge to the security and stability of the border region,” it said.

“Thus, any escalation of the conflict in northern Myanmar could spell nothing but trouble for China, which shares a profound traditional friendship with Myanmar and is committed to foster a peaceful and prosper-ous neighbourhood.”

The commentary said a peaceful, stable Myanmar best suited Beijing’s interests because of its “huge stakes” in bilateral relations.

This was why, the commentary said, Beijing had called for an early solution to the Kokang conflict and had pledged to continue to play a constructive role in promoting the peace process in Myan-mar.

“It is also worth mentioning that Chi-na’s provision of food and medical ser-vices for Myanmar refugees is purely an

act of the humanitarian spirit the country has displayed in many other parties of the world,” it said.

“It should not be misinterpreted as a form of support for any side in the conflict.”

Noting that Myanmar was among the least developed nations in Southeast Asia, the commentary said it “had witnessed leapfrog economic development and social progress in recent years, largely thanks to a helping hand from China”.

“In addition, China’s decades-long efforts to promote win-win coopera-tion with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Greater Mekong River Subregion, both of which include Myanmar, have brought enormous development opportunities for the region as a whole.

“And that is the true involvement China has with Myanmar.” [Mizzima]

China denies involvement in Kokang fighting

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