kabarmakyay: May 2009

5/03/2009

မွတ္သင့္ေသာ အာတီကယ္လ္ - ဖတ္ျဖစ္ေသာ “ဘီဘီစီ” -ရွယ္-

UN warning over Burma cyclone aid
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok

Hundreds of thousands of people in Burma's Irrawaddy Delta still need assistance - a year after a deadly cyclone, the UN and aid agencies warn.
The UN and Burma's neighbours made a $700m (£469m) appeal for reconstruction in February but have so far received pledges of only $100m (£67m). The UN says it is now allowed to bring in all the staff it needs after an initial ban by Burma's (Myanmar) junta.
Cyclone Nargis killed about 140,000 people in 2008. More than two million people were left homeless.
'Intensely suspicious'
The cyclone that ripped across the fertile delta of the Irrawaddy caused a humanitarian disaster on a scale comparable to the Asian tsunami. Yet the amounts of aid being requested are just a fraction of what was spent on countries like Indonesia after the tsunami - and not much is forthcoming yet.
Part of the problem is that most foreign journalists are banned from reporting in Burma - so there is little public awareness of the work being done by around 60 international aid agencies there. Another factor that deters donors is the fear that aid could be misused by the military - a fear that Save the Children's (STC) Andrew Kirkwood says is unfounded. "We have 3,000 of our own staff in the delta, and I'm absolutely confident that the assistance given to STC and other agencies got exactly where it was supposed to go - there has been no systematic diversion of those funds," Mr Kirkwood says.
Large numbers of the cyclone's survivors are still living in flimsy shelters; many supplies remain contaminated by salt.
Reconstruction - as opposed to emergency relief - has barely begun.

The one bright spot, say the agencies, is that they are getting as much access as they need for their staff. Although they still need to ask permission from a military government that remains intensely suspicious of any foreign presence in the country.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8030211.stmPublished: 2009/05/02 00:01:07 GMT

ျမန္မာျပည္ ဧရာဝတီ ျမစ္ဝကၽြန္းေပၚ ေဒသသို႔ နာဂစ္ဆုိင္ကလုံး ဖ်က္ဆီးခဲ့သည္မွာ တႏွစ္တာၾကာျမင့္သြားၿပီ ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း၊ ထုိေဒသတြင္ ဆုိင္ကလုံးသင့္ ဘဝမ်ား ျပန္လည္ ထူေထာင္ေရးႏွင့္ အေဆာက္အဦမ်ား ျပန္လည္ တည္ေဆာက္ေရးသည္ မ်ားစြာ လုိအပ္ေနေသးေၾကာင္း ကုလသမဂၢ အကူအညီေပးေရး ေအဂ်င္စီမ်ား အပါအဝင္ ကူညီေထာက္ပံ့ေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားက ေထာက္ျပေျပာဆိုၾကသည္။

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ ကမ္း႐ုိးတန္းေဒသ ဧရာဝတီႏွင့္ ရန္ကုန္တုိင္းတြင္ နာဂစ္မုန္တုိင္း ေမႊေႏွာက္ခဲ့သည္မွာ ေမလ ၂ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ တႏွစ္ျပည့္ေျမာက္မည္ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း မုန္တုိင္းေၾကာင့္ အသက္မေသဘဲ ရွင္က်န္ရစ္ခဲ့သူ မ်ားသည္ သူတုိ႔၏ ဘဝမ်ား ျပန္လည္တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ႏွင့္ ယခင္အတုိင္း ပုံမွန္ေနထုိင္ႏုိင္သည့္ ဘဝသုိ႔ ျပန္ေရာက္ရန္ မဆုိထားႏွင့္၊ ယခုထိတုိင္ စားနပ္ရိကၡာ လုံေလာက္မႈ မရွိျခင္း ဟူေသာ ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္မႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ရင္ဆုိင္ေနရဆဲ ရွိေနေသးသည္ဟု၊ အကူအညီေပးေရး ေအဂ်င္စီမ်ားက ေျပာဆုိၾကျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

(မဇၩိမ)။

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Burma's NLD sets election demands

Burma's largest opposition party says it will consider taking part in planned elections if the military government meets a series of demands.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) set out its conditions for taking part after a two-day meeting in Rangoon.
In a statement, it urged the release of all political prisoners, including its leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
It also called for changes to the constitution and for international observers to monitor the poll.
The NLD has made similar demands in the past. So far they have not been met.
But analysts say the statement is still a departure from the NLD's previous calls for the government to honour the results of Burma's last general election in 1990.
The NLD won that poll by a landslide but the results were ignored by Burma's ruling generals.
'Final decision' delayed
The party held a national meeting in Rangoon to discuss its stance on the general election scheduled for 2010.
But the NLD chairman, Aung Shwe, said the party would wait to see new election rules drawn up by the ruling military before making a final decision on whether or not to participate.
The ruling junta has said it will hold elections under a revised constitution.
But the NLD says the junta's constitution is fundamentally flawed.

"The constitution's main objective is for the propagation of perpetual military rule in this country and therefore is not acceptable," Aung Shwe told the meeting.
The military has reserved 25% of the seats in any future parliament for itself.
The meeting began just one day after the EU extended sanctions against Burma and renewed calls for the release of all political prisoners.
Are you in Rangoon? Did you attend the meeting? Send us your comments.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8023352.stmPublished: 2009/04/29 16:23:52 GMT

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အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမုိကေရစီ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္က ၂၀၁၀ တြင္ စစ္အစုိးရ က်င္းပမည့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြကုိ ျခြင္းခ်က္ သုံးခုျဖင့္ လက္ခံသည္ဟု ယမန္ေန႔က သေဘာထား ေၾကညာခ်က္ ထုတ္ျပန္ လုိက္သည္။ အဆုိပါ ျခြင္းခ်က္ သုံးခုမွာ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသား လႊတ္ေပးရန္၊ ၂ဝဝ၈ ခုႏွစ္ အေျခခံ ဥပေဒကုိ ျပင္ဆင္ရန္၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြတြင္ အလႊာ အသီးသီး ပါဝင္ၿပီး ႏုိင္ငံတကာက ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ခြင့္ျပဳရန္ တုိ႔ ျဖစ္သည္။

ထုိအခ်က္မ်ားမွာ ကုလသမဂၢ၊ အေရွ႕ေတာင္ အာရွ ႏုိင္ငံမ်ား အဖဲြ႔၊ ဥေရာပသမဂၢ စသည့္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာ အင္အားစုက စစ္အစုိးရကုိ တစုိက္မတ္မတ္ ေတာင္းဆုိထားသည့္ အခ်က္မ်ားလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ဤသုိ႔ ဆုံးျဖတ္လုိက္ျခင္းမွာ ျမန္မာ တျပည္လုံး ႀကဳံေတြ႔ေနရေသာ အခက္အခဲမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တဦး ျဖစ္သူ ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ေျပာသည္။“ႏုိင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြရဲ႕ ႏွစ္ရွည္လမ်ား ဒုကၡ သုကၡေတြကုိ မွ်ေဝေနတ့ဲ မိသားစုေတြ၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ လူမႈေရး၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးမွာ ေျခကုန္ လက္ပန္း က်ေနတ့ဲ ျပည္သူေတြရဲ႕ အက်ဳိးစီးပြားကုိ ေမွ်ာ္ေတြးၿပီးေတာ့ လက္ကမ္းလုိက္တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္”ဟု ဗဟုိ အလုပ္အမႈ ေဆာင္ အဖဲြ႔ဝင္ ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ေျပာသည္။

အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္သည္ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ားက ျပဳလုပ္ေပးသည့္ ၁၉၉ဝ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြတြင္ အျပတ္အသတ္ ႏုိင္ခ့ဲသည့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီ ျဖစ္သည္။ အစုိးရက အဆုိပါ ရလဒ္ကုိ အေကာင္အထည္ မေဖာ္ဘဲ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြတခု ျပဳလုပ္ပါက အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ အေနျဖင့္ လက္မခံႏုိင္ေၾကာင္း ယခင္က ေၾကညာထားသည္။ ယမန္ေန႔က ထုတ္ျပန္သည့္ စာမ်က္ႏွာ ၃ မ်က္ႏွာပါ ေရႊဂုံတုိင္ ေၾကညာစာတမ္းသည္ အနယ္နယ္ အရပ္ရပ္မွ အဖဲြ႔ခ်ဳပ္ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား ရန္ကုန္တြင္ အထူး အစည္းအေဝး ျပဳလုပ္ခ့ဲရာမွ ထြက္ေပၚလာျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

ထြက္ေပၚလာမည့္ အေျဖကုိ သိလုိသျဖင့္ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ားကပင္ အဆုိပါ အစည္းအေဝးကုိ ျဖစ္ေျမာက္ေစလုိ သည္ ဟု အကဲခတ္မ်ားက သုံးသပ္ၾကသည္။ အထူး အစည္းအေဝးသုိ႔ သြားေရာက္မည့္သူမ်ားကုိ ကန္႔သတ္ ပိတ္ပင္၊ ဖမ္းဆီးျခင္း မျပဳခ့ဲသည့္ အခ်က္ကုိ ၎တုိ႔က ေထာက္ျပၾကသည္။

Burma offers Rohingya return deal
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok

The Burmese government has said it will take back ethnic Rohingyas who have fled to neighbouring countries.
But it will only do so if they identify themselves as Bengalis, as it refuses to recognise the Rohingyas as one of its official minorities. Tens of thousands of Rohingyas have left Burma in recent years and washed up in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
In December, the Thai military began dragging boats of Rohingya asylum seekers to sea and setting them adrift. The policy has provoked widespread condemnation. However, leaders from the affected countries attending the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Thailand have been unable to agree on a solution to the displaced Rohingyas. Confronted by evidence that his military had been casting hundreds of Rohingya boat people adrift at sea, the Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has responded that this is a regional problem which can only be solved in consultation with the various affected countries.
Bizarre policies
This week's Asean summit would seem to be the ideal opportunity - it is one of the few international venues attended by senior Burmese leaders. But the other Asean states are getting little co-operation from their Burmese colleagues. The Burmese foreign minister told his Thai counterpart that his country might be willing to take back Rohingyas - but only if they were categorised as Bengalis who reside in Burma, not Burmese citizens. This is in keeping with a bizarre official policy which denies Rohingyas official status, the right to move around, even to marry without permission, despite the fact that they have lived in western Burma for more than a thousand years.

A memo faxed to journalists by the Burmese consul in Hong Kong last week insisted Rohingyas could not be real Burmese, as they were dark-skinned and "as ugly as ogres". In any case, sending them back to a country where they face even worse treatment than the average Burmese citizen does not appear to be a practical solution.
That has left the Asean leaders bereft of ideas.
None wants to open the door to more Rohingyas.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the only option his country had was to turn them back - but that just raises the prospect of hundreds more being left to drift and die on the high seas.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7916254.stmPublished: 2009/02/28 07:27:26 GMT

အင္ဒိုနီးရွားႏိုင္ငံ ဘာလီကၽြန္းမွာ အဂၤါေန႕စၿပီး ႏွစ္ရက္ၾကာ လုပ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ေဒသတြင္း ေရြႊ႕ေျပာင္းေနထိုင္မႈဆိုင္ရာ ၀န္ႀကီးအဆင့္ အစည္းအေ၀းအတြင္း ေဒသတြင္း ဂယက္ထေနတဲ့ ေလွစီးေျပး ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ အေရးကိစၥကို တတ္ေရာက္လာတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေနနဲ႕ေတာ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြရိွေနတဲ့ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း လူမႈေရး ဖံြၿဖိဳးေရး လုပ္ငန္းေတြမွာ ႏိုင္ငံတကာနဲ႕ ပူးေပါင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားလိုတယ္လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။

ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ အေရးကိစၥကို ျပႆနာ ရင္ဆိုင္ေနရတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံ ႏွစ္ဘက္အၾကား ေဆြးေႏြးတာမ်ိဳးရိွသလို၊ အခုလို ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အဆင့္၊ ေဒသ အဆင့္ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မႈနဲ႕လည္း ေျဖရွင္းဖို႕ ႀကိဳးစားသြားမယ္လို႕ အင္ဒိုနီးရွားကေတာ့ ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အခု ဘာလီ အစည္းအေ၀းမွာ တထိုင္တည္း သေဘာ အေျဖထုတ္ႏုိင္မွာေတာ့ မဟုတ္ဘဲ ဒါကို လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ တရပ္အေနနဲ႕ အခ်ိန္ယူ လုပ္သြားရမယ့္ သေဘာ ရိွတယ္လို႕လည္း အင္ဒိုနီးရွား ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး ၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ေျပာခြင့္ရသူ ဖိုင္ဆာရွားက ေျပာပါတယ္။

ဒီကိစၥကို ေျဖရွင္းဖို႕ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းနဲ႕ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ သြားလိုတယ္ဆိုတာကို ျမန္မာ အာဏာပိုင္ ေတြ ဘက္က ျပသခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အနည္းဆံုးေတာ့ ဒီရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ ရိွေနတဲ့ ရခိုင္ေဒသမွာ လူမႈ ဖံြၿဖိဳးမႈလုပ္ငန္း ေတြမွာ ပူးေပါင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမယ္လို႕ ေျပာပါတယ္။

ၾသစေတးသွ် ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္ မွာေတာ့ ေလွစီးေျပး ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ အေျခအေန တိုးတက္ေကာင္းမြန္လာဖို႕နဲ႕ သူတို႕အတြက္ စီးပြားလုပ္ငန္း အခြင့္အလမး္ေတြ ရရိွလာေစဖို႕ ၾသစေတးသွ် အေနနဲ႕ လူသားခ်င္း စာနာကူညီမႈ ေထာက္ပံ့ေငြ ၃.၂ သန္း ေပးသြားမယ္လို႕ ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ ဒီေငြေတြကို WFP ကမၻာစားနိပ္ရိကၡာအစီအစဥ္ UNDP ဖံြၿဖိဳးေရးအစီအစဥ္နဲ႕ CARE Aus အဖဲြ႕တို႕ကတဆင့္ ေထာက္ပံ့ ကူညီ သြားမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႕ သိရပါတယ္။

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Maung Thar Kyaw

The Statement, dated October 30^th, and with the Place mentioned as: Sane Lai Kan Thar, the name of the State Guest House: ‘from 13:00 to 13:55 Daw Aung San Su Kyi [ASSK] came to see Union Minister U Aung Kyi, as she was invited by the Government of the Republic of Myanmar’ was issued.

At the Meeting the discussion dwelled on the situation where ‘the State is providing necessary assistances [meaning Constitution Amendments, for example, I guess]; and, in order to have economic development views on the importance of freedom of trade, and free circulation of currencies were also discussed’. And also, ‘the progress of the State’s undertakings to obtain perpetual peace initiatives with ethnic armed groups and the people that should be included in the amnesty were discussed’. Meetings in the future shall convene is agreed.

Details of the entire Meeting were not disclosed, as usual. This is the fourth time such Meeting had taken place.

After the Third Meeting between the two factions the Statement mentioned that the President was considering Amnesty, to join hands in controlling the flow of the Irrawaddy River, to bring in into legal folds of the people who are undergoing armed rebellion; and peace and rule of law were discussed.

After meeting with Aung Kyi twice ASSK met the President Thein Sein in August in Naypyidor. Soon afterward, over 200 so-called political prisoners were released under Amnesty Order. So-called political prisoner because the Governing clique consistently mentioned there is no political prisoners in Myanmar though there are plenty. There is some truth in the government’s claim that there is no political prisoner because no one was arrested under political issues but rather on criminal charges - for example: currency law, or disturbing public tranquility, etc.

ASSK met with Aung Kyi nine times under the previous military government but there was no substantive result whatsoever came out.

The Government came into existence on January 31, 2011 under the caption of the Government of the Republic of Myanmar with its President elected by the Union Parliament, a former military officer General Thein Sein. Many opinionated this General is a Dove – a soft liner, and his Deputy President Thiha Thura Tin Aung Myint Oo [Shit Loane], another ex-General is a Hawk – a hard liner; all baloney; they all are one liner, i.e. for the prosperity and welfare of the Armed Forces, meaning the top and upper echelon of the Army, under the guise of democracy.

New Guise needs, of course, new format and that new format is what the new government is formatting or formatted by the military junta before the State Power was transferred and implementing it as planned. Whether former SG Than Shwe is pulling the string from behind or is he still involved in day to day affairs are all irrelevant, though his State managed private office near Oatparta Thati Pagoda in Naypyidor is hooked with Online TV honing in onto the proceedings of the Union Parliament. He knows or he is privy to know who is behaving or misbehaving in the Union Parliament but whether he is watching the TV is something yet to be known or playing his favorite games.

The Executive, Judiciary, and Legislature were formed and on March 30^th the State Power was transferred; the military junta SPDC was dissolved. The Ministry of Interior had given warnings to NLD Chairman Aung Shwe and Secretary ASSK in the last week of June to stop all its political activities as NLD is no political party according to the Party Registration Law of the Union Election Commission. The Ministry warning emphatically mentioned that NLD’s actions were intentionally motivated against the Law.

On top of that Union Election Commission had warned with a letter dated April 5^th to all 37 Registered Political Parties not to communicate with illegal political entities. Presumably, political circles as well as diplomatic community considered the warning was directed towards NDL.

Though the new government’s changing color is visible it is still noticeably unruly. The disregards of public opinions as well as international barrages remain as the hallmark of the Thein Sein’s Administration.

Disregarding its own Ministry’s Order Thein Sein allowed Minister Aung Kyi to parley with ASSK and even invited her to Naypyidor and received her exclusively where all political leaders from the Registered Political Parties are treated shabbily at the same occasion.

The Constitution was amended proposed by the Union Election Commission regarding the Membership where criminals cannot be party members or a political entity cannot register if its members are serving criminals. That phrase has now been erased for the sake of NLD. That amendment had made eased NLD to avoid the issue of abandoning its own jailed members when and if they apply for Party Registration.

The antagonistic political ogres of Burma are, on the visual body politics, in cordial relationship. One is, up to recent past, enjoyed full support of China and now trying its best to veer off to get into the western orbit. The other ogre has, from the very beginning to present, receives consistent and absolute no-matter-what support from the western camp. It has four Radio stations providing overwhelming support in high volume of propaganda just for one person, viz. Radio Free Asia and Voice of America [two US outfits], BBC [British outfit], and Democratic Voice of Burma [EU outfit] beaming into Burma where people are socket in with one line to support, day in and day out, every day. This ogre is the western group’s horse of Burma and Thein Sein Administration wants to ride along with that horse to the winning post. Is consistent propping up necessitate a leader to become an icon? Yes, it is, at least in Burma, it has been proven!

Within a couple of days NLD will decide whether to register and the outcome is quite predictable: ‘if ASSK is promised to contest in the upcoming By-election then NLD will allow to Register by ASSK regardless of party or public opinion’. Does it mean: ‘if she is not allowed to contest in the upcoming By-election’ then NLD will not be permitted to register by ASSK? Quite likely so, as all the past behaviors indicated that: ‘person is superior to policy’, and the ‘party is dispensable’.

So far, there is no knowledge that the outcome of the Aung Kyi-Su Kyi Meeting had agreed whether ASSK will be allowed to contest in the election. If that is the case the amendment of the constitution will be a major issue. At the end of the day, one faction will sure to swallow the other like python. No on

e knows, which one will come out as the python and which one is Mai Dwe Lay.

Maung Thar Kyaw

Taiwan, November 3, 2011.

Here she is, Thinzar Win, on the right.

Could you still think you are looking at Burmese girls who are posting for this photo in Rangoon? If you think the junta is to be blamed for all decadent aspects, then, your thinking may be inconclusive.

Shwedarling.com, a website for dating and mating prevails in today’s Burma. In 1988 no one could dream that Burma would be at this stage today but it has advanced so fast and so vast.

Infested with nouveau riche in the ngathalau’ economy decadences are abound; instead of tea break at usual hour at or around 4:00 PM now the nouveau riche have new past time at 3:30 PM or so – “Time to squeeze Pau’ Si” at Karaoke bars that are mushrooming through out Burma!

Junta’s policies may have pushed urbanites to that corner but it is just a plain excuse. Getting along by going along is a sin, by all means.

Here is another exhibit to think of!

Moe Hay Ko, another Model, good at Catwalk as well as other walks – bed walk [?] smooching somewhere in the quiet corner!

Salamani Kantchalar!

Burma was under absolute monarchy from 1044 AD until 1885 AD and was under different dynasties. The Monarchs yearned to possess White Elephant; i.e. to claim as the Owner of the White Elephant or Sin Phyu Shin, or, if they have more than one White Elephant, then, Sin Phyu Myarr Shin!

One White Elephant-crazy king even commanded to retrieve a dead elephant floated down the river that had resemblances of White Elephant and kept in his palace and claimed he was the Sin Phuy Shin.

White Elephant is considered to represent the power and glory of the Owner and the White Elephant would appear, according to the myth, only if the Ruler of the country has strong Power and Glory.

Burma has dictators since 1962: viz. Ne Win, Saw Maung, Than Shwe; and, all of them seem to believe that they were the royalty somehow or other. The last dynasty, Koane Baung, ended with His Majesty King Thibaw. The prophecy had it that there would be 13 Koane Baung kings to reign Burma. Thibaw was the 11th and two more kings are yet to reign. Ne Win presumed he was the 12th Koane Baung King! Saw Maung seemed to have believed that he was the reincarnation of King Kyan Sit Tharr of the Pagan Dynasty, and, Than Shwe believes he was the reincarnation of King Thar Lun.

During Thar Lun Than Shwe’s reign, a White Elephant was sited in the jungle of Rakhine State. With pomp and pageantry the White Elephant was brought to Rangoon, the then Nay Pyi Daw and kept in the highly decorated pavilion that befits only to the royalty with special elephant guards, etc., so on and so forth. All the necessary arrangements were carried out by MI and its Chief Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt who believes he was the reincarnation of Bayint Naung of Taungngoo Dynasty, though he never got to the top most spot of the junta’s ivory tower. The propaganda mill was fanning at high speed that the current rulers of Burma have highly auspicious power and glory so much so that the White Elephant was presented by the Nats [Resplendent being worthy of veneration].

Within a few months after the White Elephant had settled in at the newly built pavilion a Bangladeshi, or, to be more exact, a Chittagonian, or better known in Burma as Khortaw Kalar showed up at the Bangladeshi Embassy in Rangoon, claiming that the elephant at the Pavilion was his elephant that was herded away by the Burmese while grazing in the jungle and requested the Bangladeshi Ambassador to reclaim the elephant from the Burmese junta on his behalf. To cut the story short the Ambassador along with the Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MI officers went to the Pavilion with the Khortaw Kalar and demanded to prove his claim.

There, Khortaw Kalar stepped out and bellowed: Salamani Kantchalar!

At the very instant the ‘Command’ was heard the White Elephant lifted up his trunk and trumpeted a very loud noise. The ‘Command’ was given for the second time and the White Elephant responded in the same manner again. Then, Khortaw Kalar commanded in more Khortaw words: the White Elephant was under complete spell of commands – sitting, kneeling, etc. Now, the claim was proven to be true and the negotiation was but started. MI ended up paying US $ 100,000.00 from the State coffer as demanded by the Khortaw Kalar for the White Elephant that was supposed to have been presented by the Nats due to the power and glory of the rulers of Burma.

Khortaw did not stop then and there. He added there are four more such elephants in his possession and they were up for sale if the price is right. MI arranged a delegation to accompany the Khortaw to his native village in the no-man’s land between Bangladesh and Burma to inspect the so called White Elephants. There, the delegation found two more White Elephants out of the four and agreed to pay US$ 200,000 a piece.

Burmese delegation could not just take the two elephants away they bought; they need the Khortaw to release the two in the Rakhine jungle for them to herd them back to Burma later as though it was naturally sited. Thus, the usurper royalties of Burma got three White Elephants at a price of US $ 500,000.

Some one got excited regarding the Salamani Kantchalar and traced back how it came into existence! In the anal of Burma there was a time when a Shan Prince by the name of Sao Han Pha, better known as Tho Han Bwa reigned Burma. He was a tyrant by all means; conceited and insolent, and very much anti-Buddhist religion. During his rein many Monks were tortured, killed and extradited to far away places and forced them from learning Buddhist scripture. Tho Han Bwa was the Daman daye [impediment endangering the teachings of Buddha] of his time. Under Tho Han Bwa, some aspects of Buddhist incantations had changed; for example: Buddhan Tharanan Gitsarmi, Dhaman Tharanan Gitsarmi but Sanghan Tharanan was turned into Gunsarmi, and Buddhan Puzaymi, Dhaman Puzaymi, and Sangan had turned into Pu-Jail-mi, just like recent events under Daman daye Thar Lun Than Shwe.

Many Burmese fled to far away places, including Burma-Bangladesh border to fight back Tho Han Bwa and/or other tyrants. There, they deployed Khortaws to attend their elephants. Khortaws were taught to learn ‘Commands’ in Burmese but it was very difficult for the Khortaws to learn the necessary commands for the elephants. By virtue of wits a Burmese gave a ‘battle command or a battle cry’ for the elephants: “Sarr Lho. Ma Nyee Kanazoe Thee”, in rhyme with the actual command. That, Khortaw could learn with not much difficulty. As the time woes on the command Sarr Lho. Ma Nyee Kanazoe Thee had resonance into Salamani Kantchalar!

Ne Win who presumed to be the 12th Koane Baung, Saw Maung who presumed to be the reincarnation of King Kyan Sit Tharr of the Pagan Dynasty, and the cagey sly fox Khin Nyunt who believes he was the reincarnation of Bayint Naung of Taungngoo Dynasty had all but ended badly. Now we have to see how Than Shwe who believes he was the reincarnation of King Thar Lun ended? Is it to believe that those who sit on such chairs excrete such excreta?

As a matter of fact, the real Owner of the White Elephants or the Sin Phyu Myarr Shin actually was the Khortaw Kalar of Bangladesh!

By the way,
All the Usurpers,
Ne Win, Saw Maung, Than Shwe are mere “Suu Yauts”!