- In-Depth
Life with hard labour
Under the glare of the midday sun, several dozen men wearing blue outfits, with shackles around their ankles, stood grouped together in a field of shrubs and tall grass. One man among them, holding a long bamboo cane, started to shout at the thin-looking prisoners and they began to use hoes and spades to clear the thick vegetation. “One, two, three, four!” he yelled rhythmically, setting a quick pace for the work. Nearby, a stocky prison warder was looking on with a rifle slung over his shoulder and an umbrella to shield him from the blazing sun. The convicts were from Kaung Hmu Labour Camp and were seen in June as they cleared a piece of wasteland along the Mandalay-Lashio Road in Shan State for the expansion of a sugarcane plantation. The man barking orders was a prisoner appointed to be a so-called prison management assistant, who acts as an enforcer and by doing so can avoid labour. These men – also called “stick-holders” in Burmese – not only use violence to deal with dissent, former prisoners said, but also flog labourers into working harder. “The stick-holders would beat us at will. We worked at the front and they beat…
- Investigation
Special report: Abuses, exploitation rife in Myanmar’s forgotten prison labour camps
Some 20,000 convicts toil in prison camps across the country, where they face abuse, exploitation and forced labour, a Myanmar Now investigation finds.
- News
NLD fights to end bribery for govt services
Burma’s new National League for Democracy (NLD) government has a huge set of reform challenges waiting for it, but few could be more important and intractable than corruption. During decades of military rule graft became ubiquitous. To the anger of ordinary citizens, bribes were required for the simplest government services, while it became the norm in doing business and obtaining licenses in the country. During the former Thein Sein government, there was little change in this situation. Fighting corruption is a defining principle of the NLD, along with democratic practices. Aung San Suu Kyi, as Minister of the President’s Office, recently banned civil servants from accepting gifts worth more than 25,000 kyats ($23), while a leading MP has said that clean government is the ‘life blood’ of the party. But rooting out bribery will be easier said than done; a recent experience reminded me just how deeply entrenched the problem is among the underpaid civil service. Last month, I went to the immigration office in Rangoon’s North Okkalapa Township, where I grew up, to obtain a simple document stating I no longer reside there. I had moved to the city’s centre and needed this document to register in my new neighbourhood. Posters inside said the document…
- In-Depth
An NLD lawmaker’s long journey from prison to parliament
In one of the many rooms of Burma’s massive parliament building in Naypyidaw, the country’s sprawling military-designed capital, Bo Bo Oo is busy reviewing a stack of letters on his desk. The newly minted National League for Democracy (NLD) lower house MP is going through numerous invitations, meeting requests from foreign embassies, and several letters from businessmen seeking appointments. Bo Bo Oo, the secretary of the lower house’s International Relations Committee, said he would politely decline the latter since he does not want to be persuaded into serving any business interests. “Many positive things are coming our way. It is very important that we are not tempted by some of them,” he said. For the 52-year-old, his new place in the halls of power presents a sharp contrast with how he spent most of his adult life. Bo Bo Oo was jailed by the former military junta at age 26 for participating in the 1988 democratic uprising; from 1989 to 2009 he was held in different prisons across the country. “These days, people often ask me if I ever imagined these changes in the past. I say I never even thought about it,” he told Myanmar Now in an interview in the…
- News
As Thein Sein exits, his reform legacy gains mixed reviews
Shortly after newly elected President Htin Kyaw completed a swearing-in ceremony in Burma’s parliament on Wednesday morning, the country’s new leader, a “proxy” of National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, headed to the Presidential Residence in Naypyidaw. In its stately diplomatic hall, Htin Kyaw met outgoing President Thein Sein. An aired video recording of the hand-over ceremony shows Thein Sein, silent and emotionless, give his presidential sash to his successor and quickly exit the building. It was a quiet event that marked the end of the historic and tumultuous five-year presidential term of Thein Sein. He was believed to have been handpicked by former military supremo Than Swe to carry out Burma’s democratic transition under quasi-civilian rule. Thein Sein’s presidency has drawn mixed reviews, with most observers acknowledging its dramatic democratic reforms, while many criticise its continued repression, outbreaks of communal violence and conflict, and limited socio-economic progress. ‘Myanmar Spring’ “This was ‘Myanmar Spring, Burma Spring’,” Zaw Htay, the director of the President’s Office, said in a recent interview, favourably comparing Thein Sein’s reforms and smooth handover of power with the violence that followed the “Arab Spring” revolutions in the Middle East. “The president had to accommodate…
