Nothing terribly new in any of this – simply a journalist up-dating old copy, except for the part interviewing Dr. Yeoh.
He’s certainly right on the need for more Australia Asia-literacy plus integration.
Sure – the Asian highway has made some progress : eg. Vietnam’s
massive national road-building over the past decade.
And loosening unnecessary visa and trade barriers will be progress.
But major inter-Asian disputes – eg. China-Japan recently, yet again – show Asian integration is still many decades away from what the EU has achieved.
Thanks for the information. Goshal’s article and CPB’s secret plan and schedule for civil war are now becoming very disputable facts. But when I was growing up in Burma every old politician accepted them as undeniable facts.
U Kyaw Nyein, Thein Phe Myint, and U Nu all wrote about them in details. I just referenced the facts exactly as what they wrote in their books.
You sounded like you are from CPB, aren’t you? Any way here is the long answer for your question about my father.
My father joined a group of BIA soldiers marching past his dirt-poor village called Magyi-pinbu in Mahlaing township when he was just 14 or 15. He ended up in Bo Kyw Zaw’s BDA battalion in Pyinmana. Later he was selected for the second batch of Mingaladon Japanese Academy and he became an officer in Bo Kyaw Zaw’s Model Regiment (San-Pya Tatyin) in Pegu in 1943.
He met Bogyoke Aung San there often and he must have impressed his Bogyoke he posted him back to the academy as the senior Burmese instructor. At that time the Academy had the fifth regular batch of cadets and the primary classes for the young. Young General Kyaw Htin and young Dr. Maung Maung were among them. He formed and led the Cadet battalion on the foothills of Pegy-Yoma during the fight against Japanese.
After BNA’s surrender to the British as Aung San’s agreement with Slim he let British disarm his battalion and he and his men followed his bogyoke to PVO. (of course after burying all the captured arms from the Japanes army) There were many confusions between the twos of Aung San’s Bo Htun Hla. My father Bo Htun Hla was uneducated but big and tall and thus became Aung San’s brawn while the smaller Bo Htun Hla (Tetkatho Ne Win) was educated and became Aung San’s brain and PA.
My father became a master-less samurai or a ninja-warrior after Aung San’s death. He had thousands of armed-men under his command. He was then persuaded by Bo Kyaw Zaw to join back the regular army as a junior officer while CPB offered to take in all his PVO men as part of Ma-thone-lone division and him as a colonel Commanding the Division.
Understandably he took CPB’s offer and became what they called Military Leader (sit-yay-tar-wun-gan) of ma-thone-lone Division. He met my mother who was a divisional organizer and CEC member of CPB Women Organization in the jungle and I was born in a jungle on Pegu-Yoma area now part of Than Shew’s Nay-pyi-daw in 1956.
Later he was moved to CPB’s Irrawaddy Division and finally to Shan State Division in 1960 when CPB started building the Burma’s Ho Chi Min trail from Chinese border to the Pegu Yoma. In 1960 my mother together with my younger brother was captured alive by Bo Min Kyi’s Second Chin Rifles and the army kept them in house arrest at Battalion HQ in Magwe and ransomed them to bring my father and his division back into fold.
My father and his men surrendered in Inlay (a CPB stronghold then), in March 1963. The news was in the newspaper then as one of Ne Win’s Ma-Sa-La victories over the CPB. I think one major reason for his surrender was the increasingly pro-Chinese policy of CPB. My father was basically a racist and hated both Chinese and Indians with his guts. Any way by then he was half-dead and half-mad as the malaria virus had already reached inside his brain.
He couldn’t do anything productive and had to spend many periods in Mingaldon Base Hospital and he died in 1980. His comrade Bo Myo Myint who also was a graduate from the second intake of Mingladon Japanese Academy is still alive and living in Kunming together with other exile CPB leaders, I believe. Ko Po Than Gyaung also knew me as I have email communications with him since about three years ago.
My father hardly talked about his past, so what I know about him is mostly from my mother or his comrades and soldiers. I am not so sure about if he was in CPB Central Committee or not. But I still have many old photos of him together with Thakhin Than Htun and the Central Committee members and other divisional military commanders of the red army.
Maybe one day I will write about him and publish the photos.
Several of the HR items you’ve quoted could well have referred to offenses perpetrated by US personnel in various locations around the world, & in the US. I wonder if Obama is considering imposing sanctions against his own officials. And just what kind of sanctions was he recommending? It looks like the next stage of the Great Anti- Iran Gear-up.
I frankly don’t hold with trade sanctions. It seems that their major effect is to increase the suffering of those who have no power to make decisions & no resources; those who do have power in the countries that have been punished in this way have alternative ways of getting whatever goodies they want.
But I do agree that it’s worth noting that the World’s Policeman has indeed been remarkably silent about Thailand’s HR transgressions. (n.b. Thailand doesn’t have much in the way of oil & attractive minerals, does it!)
Tarrin in your many posters above, particularly #42, I was sensing that you believe that criminal Samai Wongsawan was some kind of hero freedom fighter . . . and you mentioned: ” . . . ‘The government shouldn’t think that they can monopolize violence’ I quote this phase because you made me feels like somehow the Red is obligated to be ‘peaceful’. And then you went to semi-glorify Samai as a freedom-avenger of sort. So I was certain you were receiving and passing the usual Red rumors of made-up ridiculous fictions .
Let me reminded you again that I got this from public news sources and not from UDD rally as you claimed. The gun shot wound was reported in Bangkok Post here http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/200098/man-on-a-mission-of-doom
You shouldn’t mix two completely different topics into one. When I go to UDD or the PAD rally I go to observe the participant and about Samai I dont have to dig far for his info its all reported on the main stream media.
U Hla Oo, Thakhin Soe apologized to Bo Ne Win, U Nu and the people at large for his part in the destruction of Burma ensuing his acivities underground. However he was no longer with the CPB or White Flags on 28 March 1948 when U Kyaw Nyein issued an order to arrest all the CPB leaders in the country. By the way, Thakhin Soe party was not CPB, but CP(B).
Yebaw Pho Than Gyaung of CPB recently wrote that the so-called Goshal’s article in the bombay’s newspaper “The New Era” was not officially endorsed by the CPB and not written by Goshal although it was claimed as such.It was written by an Indian communist.
By the way, who was your father? What rank he held in the CPB and then after surrender?
I have been to your blog and it is very informative to read what you have gathered there. Especially the books section. Keep up the good work and please keep in touch.
Please read Chin Peng’s Autobiography “My Side of History”. The legendary leader of Malayan Communist Party had spent his long exile years in Peking in a very large compound together with a rather large group of CPB men. He basically detailed the way the CPC controlled the rebelling Communist Partys from the SE Asia.
I have read the book in 2003 and if I still correctly remember I believe Chin Peng mentioned that the CPC Politburo Member responsible for the Ethnic Minorities’ Affairs in China is the sole CPC senior-official responsible for all the exile Communists from the neighboring countries and their respective partys in China at that time.
To add to Billyd. Perhaps also some consideration of the number of Isan workers/farmers who are migrating across the border to Laos in search of economic opportunity and cultural solidarity. AW
Come on Chris, it shouldn’t take this long to make your case. Charles Keyes, for one, has been publishing on Isan ethnoregionalism for decades and would be a useful starting point. For historical background, have a look at Ivarsson’s work on Laos and Thongchai on Thai borders. More broadly, keep in mind Paul Collier’s ideas about the economic difficulties of small, landlocked countries. Can’t recall the author at the minute, but there’s been important work done also on the way in which Laos consumption of Thai media (especially soaps) is actually creating a certain level of Thai identity preferences for Laos people, which may be problematic for your Isan separatist thesis…
From my perspective, I think the key element shaping the future of the region is the Free Trade architecture that is due to come in to play in 2015-2020. Its impact on local economies, labour, working condition, culture, subjectivities etc is worthy of much serious investigation.
What is the source for the claim the CPB was controlled by the Chinese Ethnic Minority Affairs office? I thought it was pretty well established all aid to the CPB (like that of the CPT and CPM) was handled by the CPC’s Yunnan Province Committee (for example see Martin Smith’s book Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity pg 249.) I would also point out that aid isn’t the same as control.
And your suggestion of getting more economists involved in commenting on New Mandala type issues is a good one. Of course, we are very happy to hear from anyone who is inclined to provide economically-minded analysis.
This is further to my poster above (#9). I believe that the New Mandala forums should comprehend more ‘economic issues’; thus said, more economists (ANU economics students/granduates?) should be drawn into the discussions to get their professional perspectives thereof.
I was reading today’s article of NYT “Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/business/17view.html?_r=1&hp), and although the author Robert H. Frank was talking about the USA situation, his concern that ” . . .many economists are reluctant to confront rising income inequality directly, saying that whether this trend is good or bad requires a value judgment that is best left to philosophers. . .” rings true for Thailand and the rest of the world.
Capitalism had overrun the whole globe and who else are worshiped as ‘hero-role-models’ but the ‘billionaires’ and their outrageous consumption lifestyle (with the worship heavily leaning towards the consumption lifestyle rather than effort-reward process).
I would go far as to suggest that the eruptions of people discontent, often times violent, at areas of the world including Thailand’s Isaarn region, were influenced by the blatant consumption by the “haves”, while the “have-nots” have wiped themselves out financially in their copycat let-me-eat-my-cake-too as shown on daily TV.
Samai Wongsuwan was a known dangerous trouble maker according to the police blotter and he had been implicated in several other bombing incidents during the Reds violent protests in April-May 2010. I am just angry the authorities could not arrest him much sooner before he detonated himself and nearly wiped out a neighborhood.
I counsel you Tarrin to stay clear away from people like Samai Wongsuwan when you do attend UDD rumor-seeking, I mean truth-seeking, meetings.
‘Human Rights’ is just another weapon in the US arsenal with which to impose its will world wide. The US claims to support democracy too, until the ‘wrong’ people are elected… Hamas in Palestine… or the ‘right’ people seize power… the Military/Democrat Party Putsch in Thailand.
The US is as bankrupt morally as it is financially. And it has debased the moral currency every bit as much as it has the financial.
All that’s left is for the wind of the butterfly’s wings, in Thailand or elsewhere on the far side of the world, to blow down the house of cards that is all that remains of my beloved country.
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Grand plans for Southeast Asia
Nothing terribly new in any of this – simply a journalist up-dating old copy, except for the part interviewing Dr. Yeoh.
He’s certainly right on the need for more Australia Asia-literacy plus integration.
Sure – the Asian highway has made some progress : eg. Vietnam’s
massive national road-building over the past decade.
And loosening unnecessary visa and trade barriers will be progress.
But major inter-Asian disputes – eg. China-Japan recently, yet again – show Asian integration is still many decades away from what the EU has achieved.
Burma in Limbo, part 4
Ko Maung Maung,
Thanks for the information. Goshal’s article and CPB’s secret plan and schedule for civil war are now becoming very disputable facts. But when I was growing up in Burma every old politician accepted them as undeniable facts.
U Kyaw Nyein, Thein Phe Myint, and U Nu all wrote about them in details. I just referenced the facts exactly as what they wrote in their books.
You sounded like you are from CPB, aren’t you? Any way here is the long answer for your question about my father.
My father joined a group of BIA soldiers marching past his dirt-poor village called Magyi-pinbu in Mahlaing township when he was just 14 or 15. He ended up in Bo Kyw Zaw’s BDA battalion in Pyinmana. Later he was selected for the second batch of Mingaladon Japanese Academy and he became an officer in Bo Kyaw Zaw’s Model Regiment (San-Pya Tatyin) in Pegu in 1943.
He met Bogyoke Aung San there often and he must have impressed his Bogyoke he posted him back to the academy as the senior Burmese instructor. At that time the Academy had the fifth regular batch of cadets and the primary classes for the young. Young General Kyaw Htin and young Dr. Maung Maung were among them. He formed and led the Cadet battalion on the foothills of Pegy-Yoma during the fight against Japanese.
After BNA’s surrender to the British as Aung San’s agreement with Slim he let British disarm his battalion and he and his men followed his bogyoke to PVO. (of course after burying all the captured arms from the Japanes army) There were many confusions between the twos of Aung San’s Bo Htun Hla. My father Bo Htun Hla was uneducated but big and tall and thus became Aung San’s brawn while the smaller Bo Htun Hla (Tetkatho Ne Win) was educated and became Aung San’s brain and PA.
My father became a master-less samurai or a ninja-warrior after Aung San’s death. He had thousands of armed-men under his command. He was then persuaded by Bo Kyaw Zaw to join back the regular army as a junior officer while CPB offered to take in all his PVO men as part of Ma-thone-lone division and him as a colonel Commanding the Division.
Understandably he took CPB’s offer and became what they called Military Leader (sit-yay-tar-wun-gan) of ma-thone-lone Division. He met my mother who was a divisional organizer and CEC member of CPB Women Organization in the jungle and I was born in a jungle on Pegu-Yoma area now part of Than Shew’s Nay-pyi-daw in 1956.
Later he was moved to CPB’s Irrawaddy Division and finally to Shan State Division in 1960 when CPB started building the Burma’s Ho Chi Min trail from Chinese border to the Pegu Yoma. In 1960 my mother together with my younger brother was captured alive by Bo Min Kyi’s Second Chin Rifles and the army kept them in house arrest at Battalion HQ in Magwe and ransomed them to bring my father and his division back into fold.
My father and his men surrendered in Inlay (a CPB stronghold then), in March 1963. The news was in the newspaper then as one of Ne Win’s Ma-Sa-La victories over the CPB. I think one major reason for his surrender was the increasingly pro-Chinese policy of CPB. My father was basically a racist and hated both Chinese and Indians with his guts. Any way by then he was half-dead and half-mad as the malaria virus had already reached inside his brain.
He couldn’t do anything productive and had to spend many periods in Mingaldon Base Hospital and he died in 1980. His comrade Bo Myo Myint who also was a graduate from the second intake of Mingladon Japanese Academy is still alive and living in Kunming together with other exile CPB leaders, I believe. Ko Po Than Gyaung also knew me as I have email communications with him since about three years ago.
My father hardly talked about his past, so what I know about him is mostly from my mother or his comrades and soldiers. I am not so sure about if he was in CPB Central Committee or not. But I still have many old photos of him together with Thakhin Than Htun and the Central Committee members and other divisional military commanders of the red army.
Maybe one day I will write about him and publish the photos.
US sanctions and human rights in Thailand
Several of the HR items you’ve quoted could well have referred to offenses perpetrated by US personnel in various locations around the world, & in the US. I wonder if Obama is considering imposing sanctions against his own officials. And just what kind of sanctions was he recommending? It looks like the next stage of the Great Anti- Iran Gear-up.
I frankly don’t hold with trade sanctions. It seems that their major effect is to increase the suffering of those who have no power to make decisions & no resources; those who do have power in the countries that have been punished in this way have alternative ways of getting whatever goodies they want.
But I do agree that it’s worth noting that the World’s Policeman has indeed been remarkably silent about Thailand’s HR transgressions. (n.b. Thailand doesn’t have much in the way of oil & attractive minerals, does it!)
Red art: Democracy Monument April 12 2010
Tarrin in your many posters above, particularly #42, I was sensing that you believe that criminal Samai Wongsawan was some kind of hero freedom fighter . . . and you mentioned: ” . . . ‘The government shouldn’t think that they can monopolize violence’ I quote this phase because you made me feels like somehow the Red is obligated to be ‘peaceful’. And then you went to semi-glorify Samai as a freedom-avenger of sort. So I was certain you were receiving and passing the usual Red rumors of made-up ridiculous fictions .
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/10/06/politics/Suspected-Bang-Bua-Thong-bomber-linked-to-four-oth-30139505.html
Samai Wongsawan was a mercenary for hire and he makes his living out of terror and bombs.
I sense Tarrin that you believe the current campaign of terror from Red radicals to be just and called for. Really Tarrin? To what end?
US sanctions and human rights in Thailand
The 2009 human rights report released by the State Department says this:
“Political Prisoners and Detainees
There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees.”
Work that out. Just think lese majeste and Darunee.
Red art: Democracy Monument April 12 2010
MattB – 46
Let me reminded you again that I got this from public news sources and not from UDD rally as you claimed. The gun shot wound was reported in Bangkok Post here http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/200098/man-on-a-mission-of-doom
You shouldn’t mix two completely different topics into one. When I go to UDD or the PAD rally I go to observe the participant and about Samai I dont have to dig far for his info its all reported on the main stream media.
Burma in Limbo, part 4
U Hla Oo, Thakhin Soe apologized to Bo Ne Win, U Nu and the people at large for his part in the destruction of Burma ensuing his acivities underground. However he was no longer with the CPB or White Flags on 28 March 1948 when U Kyaw Nyein issued an order to arrest all the CPB leaders in the country. By the way, Thakhin Soe party was not CPB, but CP(B).
Yebaw Pho Than Gyaung of CPB recently wrote that the so-called Goshal’s article in the bombay’s newspaper “The New Era” was not officially endorsed by the CPB and not written by Goshal although it was claimed as such.It was written by an Indian communist.
By the way, who was your father? What rank he held in the CPB and then after surrender?
Burma in Limbo, part 4
Ko Ye Min Tun,
I have been to your blog and it is very informative to read what you have gathered there. Especially the books section. Keep up the good work and please keep in touch.
Burma in Limbo, part 4
Please read Chin Peng’s Autobiography “My Side of History”. The legendary leader of Malayan Communist Party had spent his long exile years in Peking in a very large compound together with a rather large group of CPB men. He basically detailed the way the CPC controlled the rebelling Communist Partys from the SE Asia.
I have read the book in 2003 and if I still correctly remember I believe Chin Peng mentioned that the CPC Politburo Member responsible for the Ethnic Minorities’ Affairs in China is the sole CPC senior-official responsible for all the exile Communists from the neighboring countries and their respective partys in China at that time.
US sanctions and human rights in Thailand
JFL
seems I fully agree with your elegant summation, and disappointment (bad for all of us)
Topics for future discussion on New Mandala
To add to Billyd. Perhaps also some consideration of the number of Isan workers/farmers who are migrating across the border to Laos in search of economic opportunity and cultural solidarity. AW
Topics for future discussion on New Mandala
Come on Chris, it shouldn’t take this long to make your case. Charles Keyes, for one, has been publishing on Isan ethnoregionalism for decades and would be a useful starting point. For historical background, have a look at Ivarsson’s work on Laos and Thongchai on Thai borders. More broadly, keep in mind Paul Collier’s ideas about the economic difficulties of small, landlocked countries. Can’t recall the author at the minute, but there’s been important work done also on the way in which Laos consumption of Thai media (especially soaps) is actually creating a certain level of Thai identity preferences for Laos people, which may be problematic for your Isan separatist thesis…
From my perspective, I think the key element shaping the future of the region is the Free Trade architecture that is due to come in to play in 2015-2020. Its impact on local economies, labour, working condition, culture, subjectivities etc is worthy of much serious investigation.
Burma in Limbo, part 4
What is the source for the claim the CPB was controlled by the Chinese Ethnic Minority Affairs office? I thought it was pretty well established all aid to the CPB (like that of the CPT and CPM) was handled by the CPC’s Yunnan Province Committee (for example see Martin Smith’s book Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity pg 249.) I would also point out that aid isn’t the same as control.
Topics for future discussion on New Mandala
Thanks Vichai,
Appreciate it!
And your suggestion of getting more economists involved in commenting on New Mandala type issues is a good one. Of course, we are very happy to hear from anyone who is inclined to provide economically-minded analysis.
Best wishes to all,
Nich
Topics for future discussion on New Mandala
OK Nich . . . from now on MattB is Vichai N, my preferred AKA.
Topics for future discussion on New Mandala
Thanks Vichai N.,
Perhaps you could stick to the one anonymous identity while commenting on NM. It has long been our preference for commentators to use a single name.
Best wishes to all,
Nich
Topics for future discussion on New Mandala
This is further to my poster above (#9). I believe that the New Mandala forums should comprehend more ‘economic issues’; thus said, more economists (ANU economics students/granduates?) should be drawn into the discussions to get their professional perspectives thereof.
I was reading today’s article of NYT “Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/business/17view.html?_r=1&hp), and although the author Robert H. Frank was talking about the USA situation, his concern that ” . . .many economists are reluctant to confront rising income inequality directly, saying that whether this trend is good or bad requires a value judgment that is best left to philosophers. . .” rings true for Thailand and the rest of the world.
Capitalism had overrun the whole globe and who else are worshiped as ‘hero-role-models’ but the ‘billionaires’ and their outrageous consumption lifestyle (with the worship heavily leaning towards the consumption lifestyle rather than effort-reward process).
I would go far as to suggest that the eruptions of people discontent, often times violent, at areas of the world including Thailand’s Isaarn region, were influenced by the blatant consumption by the “haves”, while the “have-nots” have wiped themselves out financially in their copycat let-me-eat-my-cake-too as shown on daily TV.
Red art: Democracy Monument April 12 2010
‘Live by the gun, die by the gun’.
Samai Wongsuwan was a known dangerous trouble maker according to the police blotter and he had been implicated in several other bombing incidents during the Reds violent protests in April-May 2010. I am just angry the authorities could not arrest him much sooner before he detonated himself and nearly wiped out a neighborhood.
I counsel you Tarrin to stay clear away from people like Samai Wongsuwan when you do attend UDD rumor-seeking, I mean truth-seeking, meetings.
US sanctions and human rights in Thailand
US human rights activities are heavily overladen with political and power considerations
as your example shows Iran is currently a political target and all available avenues are employed to justify the US position
south american countries have long been subject to terrible injustices where US and in-country abuses are ignored and used
africa, se asia, etc are all subject to highly selective pontificating, support and sanctions as it suits the US political and military regime
unfortunately many countries take their cue from the US and are also unreliable and cynical in their approaches to their own people and each other
I keep hoping the UN will and its processes will improve the level of civilised behaviour
US sanctions and human rights in Thailand
‘Human Rights’ is just another weapon in the US arsenal with which to impose its will world wide. The US claims to support democracy too, until the ‘wrong’ people are elected… Hamas in Palestine… or the ‘right’ people seize power… the Military/Democrat Party Putsch in Thailand.
The US is as bankrupt morally as it is financially. And it has debased the moral currency every bit as much as it has the financial.
All that’s left is for the wind of the butterfly’s wings, in Thailand or elsewhere on the far side of the world, to blow down the house of cards that is all that remains of my beloved country.