Prime Minister Najib can’t even hold the nation together. Malaysian is unraveling at the seams. The opposition also does not which end is up. Five year plan ? For what ? More theft from Malaysians ? More Ketuanan Melayu ? An Islamic State with Hudud ? There is no plan. The Prime Minister is on his last wings; the opposition can’t decide what it represents and PAS wants an Islamic State. Malaysia should focus on a two-week plan and see if it can survive even that. Five years ? No one has a clue, not even Dr Evil, Mahathir himself.
“Tom Murphy and Claudia Mooney are two of the students taking part in study course. They said their first visit to the country represented an unrivalled opportunity to get to know the real Myanmar.”
“Claudia is keen to learn more about development.”
Dear Tom and Claudia
Know. experience and understand the real Myanmar by spending time where the 2/3 of citizenry live.
Make sure your itineraries include “Rural”. It could be as close as across the “U Pein” historical Teak Bridge near Innwa (Ava) that all of you will certainly visit or better a day journey from Naypyidaw to any villages with own monastery and very limited amenity.
Be bold and come back certified with real knowledge of complex Myanmar as oppose to being another tourist with opinion.
Sincerely like to believe that the new editor will report your progresses with unique report from both of you.
A real chance for both of you to contribute to Myanmar citizenry well being uniquely.
Combined with “power holder worship” innate in their mindset and cocooned under successive irresponsible, ruthless and short-sighted “rulers”, Burmese never get mature enough to overcome super-nationalistic chauvinism to realize all those killing, looting and thefts are not something to be proud of.
How can one expect these masses to think rationally in the current globally hysterical atmosphere of mis-information and calculatedly in calculated paranoia?
I’m guessing the response will be a variation of the British response to the Greeks reclaiming the Elgin Marbles. At least these iconic ‘artefacts’ of religious veneration albeit war booty in the case of the Great Image of Arakan are not display pieces with triumphalist connotations in a museum.
The ugly side of all nation states is their origin in conquest and enslavement. Both Myanmar and Thailand have developed little since their ugly origins. Unlike national cultures, the Great Culture that unites humanity celebrates diversity in the arts of all the world’s cultures. It does, however, work to extinguish their power structures, and their evidence-denying and chauvinistic beliefs.
Couldn’t agree more. Welcome to the brave new world of capitalist globalisation.
Free organised movement of international capital matched by a freefall of ‘irregular/illegal migration’ of international labour organised by another great capitalist enterprise – human trafficking.
Both Labour and Tory in the UK, not just the UKIP, play the immigration card nowadays, but never let on that the bosses want more immigration not less as a source of cheap labour, and go easy on the growing labour black market, at the expense of the local work force. Profits before people, the undeclared basic tenet of global capitalism.
Perhaps, the Mons should reclaim the glorious Shwe Dagon Pagoda their ancestors had built in Dagon, later renamed Yangon (End of Strife) by the Bamar conquering king. And the Rakhines, the revered golden Maha Mya Muni Buddha image, carried away to Mandalay as war booty by Bamar invaders.
You’re right. I can imagine that hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas would also love to come to Australia for purely economic reasons. The same is ttrue for all these migrants from Africa trying to get into Europe. This is the price you pay for “globalisation” in the modern capitalistic world (and you can write hundreds of politically correct Ph.D. theses about the social and cultural impact on various minority groups, not just in Burma!)
I was told by my Thai colleagues at work that the choice of language used by Rose in her video chips was basically Thai colloquial language which is prevalent among working-class Thais. It should not be deemed “profanity” as what we are used to in the West. Indeed, her choice of colloquial words directed only toward the royals is mild in comparison with what the monarch and his empire have inflicted to the country. While they enrich themselves and profit by the protection of the draconian lese majeste law, and have become the richest monarch in the world, the majority of Thais are still very poor.
“A “tax transparency amnesty” would not solve all of Myanmar’s economic woes. But it would alleviate some of the pent-up, hidden capital of many corporate entities and domestic investors.”
Does that include the cronies ?
To be fair when the amnesty is announce, the amount of all amnestied should be announced.
It’s great and inspirational to read about a Mon teacher. It’s sad to see Mon language and culture have been in a steep decline since the Burmese King Alaungpaya drove Mon people off from their heartlands. The rise of ultra-nationalist Alaungpaya clan was a “butterfly effect” in Burmese history, vanquishing the kingdoms of Arakan and Hanthawaddy, ravaging Ayutthaya, Manipur, Assam and giving birth to nationalist Burma. Mons remember this painful history vividly. I hope they would reunite to save their culture which is disappearing in Lower Burma.
Funny thing with Aung San Suu Kyi, this and that icon with plentiful glassware from around the world with Oford scholarship named after her, blah, blah, blah is that if you count the last 20 postings on Burma in New Mandala, there was only one about her and to get written she has to go all the way to China.
It is even funnier that if you watch Lord of the Rings, every time Saruman is mentioned, one cannot help remembering her! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saruman
Is it too callus to think that the reason why many of these former Burmese nationals won’t be returning permanently is because they won’t have the same level of livelihood as they would in Australia?
It’s romantic to think of these brave souls, who fought a military regime, now returning “home” to continue the good fight toward greater political liberalization and democratization.
But in raw material terms, Nai Tin Aye would be taking a step down if he returned to his “homeland.”
Especially, if the poor fellow is coming from Australia, where the roads are better, the internet is faster, the electricity runs night and day, the water is safe to drink from the tap (though I grant maybe not so tasty), the healthcare is free and world-class, consumer goods of all kinds are readily available, and I’m guessing if he’s too old to work, the Aussie government assists him with a place to stay that is relatively safe, clean, and overall reliable.
In these basic material terms, well, Myanmar is kind of a crummy place to live in comparison. Remember, Nai Tin Aye and others like him aren’t coming to fourth world countries in SE Asia in order for excitement or to escape some tawdry bourgeois demons like so many westerners drawn to the exotic east.
Why is it we are so reluctant to recognize that despite leaving Myanmar for political reasons, people like this choose to stay away for economic reasons.
Thank you for raising this important subject. The recent case of Timor Leste shows the important role a diaspora can play in a democratic transition. It also shows that the relations between “those who stayed” and “those who left” are not always easy.
A particular concern in the case of Myanmar is to ask the question to what extent has the experience of exile reinforced senses of ethnic difference, being part of a minority group, rather than a sense of being part of a larger Burmese national community? I note that the person cited in this article headed a Mon, not pan-Burmese, association in Australia.
My very limited personal contact with the Burmese diaspora in Europe has given me the impression that the experience of exile for the conveniently labelled ‘diaspora’ has accentuated ethno-religious senses of minority difference. The Rohingya (or Rakhine Muslims if you prefer) are an extreme case but there are examples amongst the Karens particularly.
ASSK, under house arrest and as a democratic icon provided a unifying rallying point for the diverse diaspora during the period of the military junta. Now she has, inevitably and with good reason, become a Bamar politician, to mix metaphors, will the “glue still stick”?
That was indeed your inference and you never mentioned Arab influence at all. It is not me or the Bamar that are conflating ethnicity with religion; the “Rohingya” are proud to be Muslim, practice Islam openly, and if you understand Islam, all Muslims conflate religion with their culture, if not specifically ethnicity. That is why there is the word “Ummah” (global Islamic community united in faith) and why all Muslims make the Haj, where in Makah, it is Islamic tradition that all Muslims wear a White Cloth so that there is no distinction among a “Rohingya” Muslim and a Trinidadian Muslim. That is the ideal; how it is practiced in its fullness, is for another discussion. This is one of the pillars of Islam. Not every Bamar person has to be a monk or even pray at Shwedagon Pagoda. Your whole paradigm has heretofore focused on the “Rohingya”, therefore your implied context was an inference of Bengali Muslim influence among the Malay Sultanates. My response was clear enough (as was that of SWH). What is intractable is Dhaka’s refusal to repatriate these Bangladeshis resident in Rakhine; what is intractable is the evident persecution of indigenous Rakhine Muslims by the “Rohingya”, and what is intractable is the obvious radicalization of the “Rohingya” as seen in increasing number of “Rohingya” women wearing hijabs, burqas and niqabs, characteristic of Wahhabi and Salafi Islam, and not (save hijabs) Hanafi or Shaf’i Islam. When I was in Myanmar and Bangladesh
recently and ten years ago, I could go into Bangladeshi villages and see women with no head covering, which was common then in Bangladesh, never mind more liberal Dhaka. Now Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Jaish-e-Islami are active in Bangladesh, and it would be highly na├пve to think they don’t try and recruit among the “Rohingya”, as their goal is an Islamic State in Bangladesh, if not a global caliphate.
Myanmar is not an Islamic State. U Nu formally declared it a Buddhist State, about 55 years ago, and if Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan are allowed to be Islamic States (and they are) and concurrently persecute Islamic minorities, then the hypocrisy against Myanmar vis-├а-vis its social, cultural and religious status is unacceptable; the same hypocrisy exhibited towards Israel, one that U Nu pointed out, in 1955, when he begged the Bandung Conference to accept Israel, and Nasser, Soekarno, Castro, Nkrumah, Nehru and others refused. President Thein Sein may not have as much wisdom as Thakin (U) Nu, but he has wisdom enough not to allow Myanmar to be part of any Southeast Asia Islamic Caliphate.
What compromise do the “Rohingya”, OIC and the global Ummah offer to non-Muslims, specifically non-Muslim Burmese (Sensu Lato) and Myanmar, as a nation-state ?
A notice a strong penchant amongst commentators on New Mandala to “kill the messenger” rather than comment on the “message” itself. Irrespective of who wrote the letter
a. Is the evidence presented correct?
b. Does the civilianized military junta deserve continued condemnation?
b. Is the strategy suggested by the author, namely economic sanctions, efficacious?
On the latter point, the question of sanctions in Myanmar (as previously in South Africa) caused much heated debate with honest well-intentioned people taking opposing positions.
There seems to be a strong misunderstanding. I never suggested that the Rakhine Muslims populated or controlled the sultanates in Aceh and Pattani. The latter were definitely ethnically Malay but with a strong Arab influence coming via the Indian sub-continent.
The whole problem of conflating ethnicity with religion is the source of many tensions throughout Southeast Asia. Worse when ethnicity is conflated with religious identification and then for demands for a ‘homeland’ then we are confronted with somewhat intractable issues which can only be resolved with a degree of compromise on one or two of these three dimensions.
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Malaysia’s 11th Five Year Plan
Prime Minister Najib can’t even hold the nation together. Malaysian is unraveling at the seams. The opposition also does not which end is up. Five year plan ? For what ? More theft from Malaysians ? More Ketuanan Melayu ? An Islamic State with Hudud ? There is no plan. The Prime Minister is on his last wings; the opposition can’t decide what it represents and PAS wants an Islamic State. Malaysia should focus on a two-week plan and see if it can survive even that. Five years ? No one has a clue, not even Dr Evil, Mahathir himself.
Front row seat in fast-changing Myanmar
“Tom Murphy and Claudia Mooney are two of the students taking part in study course. They said their first visit to the country represented an unrivalled opportunity to get to know the real Myanmar.”
“Claudia is keen to learn more about development.”
Dear Tom and Claudia
Know. experience and understand the real Myanmar by spending time where the 2/3 of citizenry live.
Make sure your itineraries include “Rural”. It could be as close as across the “U Pein” historical Teak Bridge near Innwa (Ava) that all of you will certainly visit or better a day journey from Naypyidaw to any villages with own monastery and very limited amenity.
Be bold and come back certified with real knowledge of complex Myanmar as oppose to being another tourist with opinion.
Sincerely like to believe that the new editor will report your progresses with unique report from both of you.
A real chance for both of you to contribute to Myanmar citizenry well being uniquely.
The end of exile
. . . then, return the Great Image to Rakhine country where it belongs. It’s never too late.
The end of exile
Combined with “power holder worship” innate in their mindset and cocooned under successive irresponsible, ruthless and short-sighted “rulers”, Burmese never get mature enough to overcome super-nationalistic chauvinism to realize all those killing, looting and thefts are not something to be proud of.
How can one expect these masses to think rationally in the current globally hysterical atmosphere of mis-information and calculatedly in calculated paranoia?
The end of exile
I’m guessing the response will be a variation of the British response to the Greeks reclaiming the Elgin Marbles. At least these iconic ‘artefacts’ of religious veneration albeit war booty in the case of the Great Image of Arakan are not display pieces with triumphalist connotations in a museum.
The end of exile
The ugly side of all nation states is their origin in conquest and enslavement. Both Myanmar and Thailand have developed little since their ugly origins. Unlike national cultures, the Great Culture that unites humanity celebrates diversity in the arts of all the world’s cultures. It does, however, work to extinguish their power structures, and their evidence-denying and chauvinistic beliefs.
The end of exile
Couldn’t agree more. Welcome to the brave new world of capitalist globalisation.
Free organised movement of international capital matched by a freefall of ‘irregular/illegal migration’ of international labour organised by another great capitalist enterprise – human trafficking.
Both Labour and Tory in the UK, not just the UKIP, play the immigration card nowadays, but never let on that the bosses want more immigration not less as a source of cheap labour, and go easy on the growing labour black market, at the expense of the local work force. Profits before people, the undeclared basic tenet of global capitalism.
The end of exile
Perhaps, the Mons should reclaim the glorious Shwe Dagon Pagoda their ancestors had built in Dagon, later renamed Yangon (End of Strife) by the Bamar conquering king. And the Rakhines, the revered golden Maha Mya Muni Buddha image, carried away to Mandalay as war booty by Bamar invaders.
The end of exile
You’re right. I can imagine that hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas would also love to come to Australia for purely economic reasons. The same is ttrue for all these migrants from Africa trying to get into Europe. This is the price you pay for “globalisation” in the modern capitalistic world (and you can write hundreds of politically correct Ph.D. theses about the social and cultural impact on various minority groups, not just in Burma!)
Dear Mr President
I was told by my Thai colleagues at work that the choice of language used by Rose in her video chips was basically Thai colloquial language which is prevalent among working-class Thais. It should not be deemed “profanity” as what we are used to in the West. Indeed, her choice of colloquial words directed only toward the royals is mild in comparison with what the monarch and his empire have inflicted to the country. While they enrich themselves and profit by the protection of the draconian lese majeste law, and have become the richest monarch in the world, the majority of Thais are still very poor.
Myanmar needs to forgive tax dodgers
“A “tax transparency amnesty” would not solve all of Myanmar’s economic woes. But it would alleviate some of the pent-up, hidden capital of many corporate entities and domestic investors.”
Does that include the cronies ?
To be fair when the amnesty is announce, the amount of all amnestied should be announced.
The end of exile
It’s great and inspirational to read about a Mon teacher. It’s sad to see Mon language and culture have been in a steep decline since the Burmese King Alaungpaya drove Mon people off from their heartlands. The rise of ultra-nationalist Alaungpaya clan was a “butterfly effect” in Burmese history, vanquishing the kingdoms of Arakan and Hanthawaddy, ravaging Ayutthaya, Manipur, Assam and giving birth to nationalist Burma. Mons remember this painful history vividly. I hope they would reunite to save their culture which is disappearing in Lower Burma.
The end of exile
Funny thing with Aung San Suu Kyi, this and that icon with plentiful glassware from around the world with Oford scholarship named after her, blah, blah, blah is that if you count the last 20 postings on Burma in New Mandala, there was only one about her and to get written she has to go all the way to China.
It is even funnier that if you watch Lord of the Rings, every time Saruman is mentioned, one cannot help remembering her! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saruman
The end of exile
Is it too callus to think that the reason why many of these former Burmese nationals won’t be returning permanently is because they won’t have the same level of livelihood as they would in Australia?
It’s romantic to think of these brave souls, who fought a military regime, now returning “home” to continue the good fight toward greater political liberalization and democratization.
But in raw material terms, Nai Tin Aye would be taking a step down if he returned to his “homeland.”
Especially, if the poor fellow is coming from Australia, where the roads are better, the internet is faster, the electricity runs night and day, the water is safe to drink from the tap (though I grant maybe not so tasty), the healthcare is free and world-class, consumer goods of all kinds are readily available, and I’m guessing if he’s too old to work, the Aussie government assists him with a place to stay that is relatively safe, clean, and overall reliable.
In these basic material terms, well, Myanmar is kind of a crummy place to live in comparison. Remember, Nai Tin Aye and others like him aren’t coming to fourth world countries in SE Asia in order for excitement or to escape some tawdry bourgeois demons like so many westerners drawn to the exotic east.
Why is it we are so reluctant to recognize that despite leaving Myanmar for political reasons, people like this choose to stay away for economic reasons.
The end of exile
Thank you for raising this important subject. The recent case of Timor Leste shows the important role a diaspora can play in a democratic transition. It also shows that the relations between “those who stayed” and “those who left” are not always easy.
A particular concern in the case of Myanmar is to ask the question to what extent has the experience of exile reinforced senses of ethnic difference, being part of a minority group, rather than a sense of being part of a larger Burmese national community? I note that the person cited in this article headed a Mon, not pan-Burmese, association in Australia.
My very limited personal contact with the Burmese diaspora in Europe has given me the impression that the experience of exile for the conveniently labelled ‘diaspora’ has accentuated ethno-religious senses of minority difference. The Rohingya (or Rakhine Muslims if you prefer) are an extreme case but there are examples amongst the Karens particularly.
ASSK, under house arrest and as a democratic icon provided a unifying rallying point for the diverse diaspora during the period of the military junta. Now she has, inevitably and with good reason, become a Bamar politician, to mix metaphors, will the “glue still stick”?
Dear Mr President
The criteria a-c are not at all reasonable in fact laughable if not for the seriousness.
Soliciting ‘sanction’, to a country, insolent at the least imbecile at the worst.
Rice, repression and rule by force
Two names for the price of one. Religion and religiosity – God Bless America, the Saudis’ best friend.
The changing face of humanitarianism
Mr Camroux,
That was indeed your inference and you never mentioned Arab influence at all. It is not me or the Bamar that are conflating ethnicity with religion; the “Rohingya” are proud to be Muslim, practice Islam openly, and if you understand Islam, all Muslims conflate religion with their culture, if not specifically ethnicity. That is why there is the word “Ummah” (global Islamic community united in faith) and why all Muslims make the Haj, where in Makah, it is Islamic tradition that all Muslims wear a White Cloth so that there is no distinction among a “Rohingya” Muslim and a Trinidadian Muslim. That is the ideal; how it is practiced in its fullness, is for another discussion. This is one of the pillars of Islam. Not every Bamar person has to be a monk or even pray at Shwedagon Pagoda. Your whole paradigm has heretofore focused on the “Rohingya”, therefore your implied context was an inference of Bengali Muslim influence among the Malay Sultanates. My response was clear enough (as was that of SWH). What is intractable is Dhaka’s refusal to repatriate these Bangladeshis resident in Rakhine; what is intractable is the evident persecution of indigenous Rakhine Muslims by the “Rohingya”, and what is intractable is the obvious radicalization of the “Rohingya” as seen in increasing number of “Rohingya” women wearing hijabs, burqas and niqabs, characteristic of Wahhabi and Salafi Islam, and not (save hijabs) Hanafi or Shaf’i Islam. When I was in Myanmar and Bangladesh
recently and ten years ago, I could go into Bangladeshi villages and see women with no head covering, which was common then in Bangladesh, never mind more liberal Dhaka. Now Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Jaish-e-Islami are active in Bangladesh, and it would be highly na├пve to think they don’t try and recruit among the “Rohingya”, as their goal is an Islamic State in Bangladesh, if not a global caliphate.
Myanmar is not an Islamic State. U Nu formally declared it a Buddhist State, about 55 years ago, and if Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan are allowed to be Islamic States (and they are) and concurrently persecute Islamic minorities, then the hypocrisy against Myanmar vis-├а-vis its social, cultural and religious status is unacceptable; the same hypocrisy exhibited towards Israel, one that U Nu pointed out, in 1955, when he begged the Bandung Conference to accept Israel, and Nasser, Soekarno, Castro, Nkrumah, Nehru and others refused. President Thein Sein may not have as much wisdom as Thakin (U) Nu, but he has wisdom enough not to allow Myanmar to be part of any Southeast Asia Islamic Caliphate.
What compromise do the “Rohingya”, OIC and the global Ummah offer to non-Muslims, specifically non-Muslim Burmese (Sensu Lato) and Myanmar, as a nation-state ?
Dear Mr President
A notice a strong penchant amongst commentators on New Mandala to “kill the messenger” rather than comment on the “message” itself. Irrespective of who wrote the letter
a. Is the evidence presented correct?
b. Does the civilianized military junta deserve continued condemnation?
b. Is the strategy suggested by the author, namely economic sanctions, efficacious?
On the latter point, the question of sanctions in Myanmar (as previously in South Africa) caused much heated debate with honest well-intentioned people taking opposing positions.
The changing face of humanitarianism
Dear Peter Cohen,
There seems to be a strong misunderstanding. I never suggested that the Rakhine Muslims populated or controlled the sultanates in Aceh and Pattani. The latter were definitely ethnically Malay but with a strong Arab influence coming via the Indian sub-continent.
The whole problem of conflating ethnicity with religion is the source of many tensions throughout Southeast Asia. Worse when ethnicity is conflated with religious identification and then for demands for a ‘homeland’ then we are confronted with somewhat intractable issues which can only be resolved with a degree of compromise on one or two of these three dimensions.