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Top 10 news stories of 2016

The Myanmar Times news team walks down the top 10 stories of 2016, from the National League for Democracy convening the first democratically-elected government in 25 years to outbreaks of violence in Shan, Kachin and Kayin States.

 

Parliament sworn in, NLD assembles its government

Members of the National League for Democracy-dominated Union parliament first took their seats on February 1, with speculation swirling as to whom the party would choose for president in light of a constitutional ban on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi taking the post. The NLD selected party members for the bicameral legislature’s two speakerships, and weeks of speculation culminated on March 15 when little-known party loyalist U Htin Kyaw was nominated and subsequently elected to the presidency by MPs. Runner-up candidates U Myint Swe and Henry Van Thio then became vice presidents 1 and 2, respectively.

U Htin Kyaw’s first legislative proposal involved downsizing and merging his cabinet, reducing the number of ministries from 36 to 21. Members of the cabinet were sworn in on March 30, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who took the ministerial portfolios for education, energy, foreign affairs and the President’s Office.

In early April, a majority of parliamentarians passed a law creating the powerful position of state counsellor expressly for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, in a move to thwart the constitutional ban and make good on the NLD leader’s pledge to rule from a position “above the president”. She would later give up her education and energy ministerial portfolios.

 

Conflicts continue to roil the country’s north and east

Kachin, Shan and Kayin states were all theatres of war to varying degrees this year as several non-signatories to the nationwide ceasefire agreement continued to clash with the Tatmadaw. As 2016 draws to a close, one of the most prominent conflicts – between the military and the Kachin Independence Army – could further escalate as the Tatmadaw this week claimed additional territorial gains near the KIA’s Laiza headquarters.

Kayin State was the scene of a lower-grade conflict in September and October as a splinter group of the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army squared off against a joint Tatmadaw-Border Guard Force contingent in a fight over territorial holdings.

Several conflicts involving a variety of actors plagued Shan State this year, with one pitting the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) against the Restoration Council of Shan State, and another involving muscle-flexing by the United Wa State Army, which briefly encroached on territory claimed by its long-time ally, the National Democratic Alliance Army. Most of the Shan State conflicts have involved the Tatmadaw, however, and four ethnic armed groups calling their collective forces the Northern Alliance-Burma said they had had enough in November, launching a coordinated assault on police and military installations that centred on Muse.

The TNLA and the KIA were joined by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Arakan Army in staging the initial November 20 attacks, and casualties have been inflicted on both sides, and among the region’s civilian population, in the weeks since.

But it is in Kachin State where a Tatmadaw campaign that began in mid-August has seen government troops make gains this month that could fundamentally alter the trajectory of the country’s flagging peace process. A renewed government offensive drove the KIA from its strategic Gidon mountaintop base on December 17 and another outpost near the Kachin fighters’ Laiza headquarters fell to the Tatmadaw this week.

One of the country’s most formidable ethnic armed resistances, the KIA has been locked in a protracted conflict with the Tatmadaw that began in 2011, though it remained involved in peace negotiations that led to the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement and is eligible to sign the accord but has thus far opted not to do so.

 

Crisis in northern Rakhine State

Security forces began amassing in a narrow strip of land in northern Rakhine State following lethal, pre-dawn attacks on Border Guard Police outposts on October 9. By the official count, nine police were killed, and the assailants made off with firearms and ammunition stolen from a storehouse. Further clashes occurred between October 10-12, with four soldiers killed. The Tatmadaw began conducting “clearance operations” in Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships, searching for suspects who were described as Muslim “insurgents” with foreign funding. The area near the border with Bangladesh was sealed off, with independent journalists and international humanitarian aid groups restricted from accessing the “operations zone”.

Since mid-November amid the escalating violence, tens of thousands of Muslim residents in the Muslim-majority area have fled their homes. It was the largest displacement in the state since intercommunal violence flared in 2012, leaving scores dead and pushing 120,000 mainly Muslim Rohingya into camps where most remain today.

According to the International Organization for Migration, as of December 20, at least 34,000 people have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, bringing with them accusations of murder, looting, and sexual violence, claims that the government and the Tatmadaw both deny. According to satellite footage from US-based Human Rights Watch, whole villages have been razed, with a total of 1500 structures burned in “several waves of arson”.

Responding to international pressure, including condemnation from Malaysia’s prime minister and a joint statement of concern from 14 diplomatic missions to Myanmar, the president established an investigation team to probe allegations of rights abuses and determine the motive behind the attacks. Headed by Vice President and former military intelligence chief U Myint Swe, the commission conducted a three-day field visit in mid-December.

Over 550 people have been arrested in the military’s “clearance operations”, with at least six reportedly dying in custody. Over 100 people have been killed and a number of villages razed, according to government reports. Full delivery of humanitarian aid has still not resumed, including for 130,000 people who had been relying on food rations.

 

US lifts sanctions on Myanmar

While visiting Washington on the end of a whirlwind foreign tour in September, State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi sat beside US President Barack Obama as he announced the lifting of most remaining sanctions. The US economic sanctions system had been in place for nearly two decades, maintained at the encouragement of then-opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during her years of house arrest under the former junta government.

Wiping out the blacklist was hoped to spur economic development as the new government seeks to balance liberalisation with the challenges of establishing a democratic government and ending decades-long ethnic armed conflicts. Human rights advocates criticised the move to deregister hundreds of individuals and companies from the blacklist as premature, adding that the termination would surrender leverage against the military and its allies.

The termination of the executive emergency order underpinning most of the sanctions does not affect prohibitions on military-to-military assistance, some visa ineligibilities, an embargo on arms sales and sanctions against 21 individuals and 10 companies related to narcotics kingpin regulations and two individuals for dealings with North Korea. In addition to lifting the sanctions, Washington also announced that it would renew Myanmar’s eligibility for preferential trade tariffs under the Generalized System of Preferences scheme.

 

The quick deflation of Ma Ba Tha’s political influence

With a dismissive comment from Yangon’s chief minister, and a disavowal from the state Sangha, the political might and tour de force of Myanmar’s notorious Buddhist hardline group quickly unravelled in July. The Committee to Protect Nationality and Religion, known better by its Myanmar language acronym Ma Ba Tha, has helped foster a climate of fear for Myanmar’s religious minorities, and Muslims especially. The divisive group known for wielding significant political clout, backing controversial “race and religion” bills passed in 2015, and whipping up protests against even the use of term “Rohingya”, seemed to have an unstoppable momentum.

But on July 3, Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein showed no signs of being intimidated. Speaking in Singapore, he said, “The country does not need Ma Ba Tha.” He reiterated the sentiment on July 6 to a small crowd that had gathered to meet him at the airport upon his return. His comments circulated quickly on social media.

Ma Ba Tha responded to the verbal attack by convening an emergency meeting with central committee members, and then called on the government to punish U Phyo Min Thein for his remarks. Instead, a National League for Democracy spokesperson reiterated that a clerical council appointed by the government already oversees Buddhist religious life, making Ma Ba Tha unnecessary. The State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee (known as Ma Ha Na) then put out a statement saying it does not recognise Ma Ba Tha.

Whether Ma Ba Tha’s political power has been completely drained remains a subject of debate, though certainly the organisation has continued to be active, if in a quieter, more behind-the-scenes capacity.

 

‘21st-Century Panglong Conference’ held in Nay Pyi Taw

The 21st-Century Panglong Conference was convened on August 31, bringing together more than a dozen ethnic armed groups and representatives from both the government and the Tatmadaw for talks in State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s first major attempt to steer the country’s peace process. Her government downplayed expectations for a major breakthrough at the gathering, limiting the affair to a series of prepared speeches from various stakeholders and insisting that matters of substance and negotiations would be off the table.

The conference was nonetheless applauded for the roster of attendees that organisers were able to assemble, despite the absence of three ethnic armed groups at odds with the Tatmadaw and government over conditions for their participation. Both signatories and non-signatories to the nationwide ceasefire agreement attended the conference, in contrast to the previous government’s Union Peace Conference in January, which was limited to NCA signatories.

The country’s largest ethnic armed group, the United Wa State Army, was among those sending representatives, but a perceived slight sent the UWSA delegation packing after just one day. The planned five-day conference –named for the historic meeting at which Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s father Bogyoke Aung San brokered the Panglong Agreement in 1947 – concluded after just four days.

A second iteration is expected in February 2017.

 

Refugees in Thailand return

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Myanmar and Thailand oversaw a historic repatriation in October of over 70 individuals, some of whom had spent decades in Thai camps and some of whom had known no other home.

The October 25 and 26 voluntary returns marked the first official repatriation program for Karen refugees living in Thailand. The UN refugee agency welcomed the effort as a milestone in one of the world’s most protracted displacements. However, the celebrated homecoming was not without hiccups, with 25 of the anticipated returnees backing out last minute and a dispute over housing for 17 Yangon-based former refugees leading some to temporarily rue the return.

Thailand has provided shelter for thousands of Karen refugees who began fleeing clashes between the Tatmadaw and ethnic armed groups in the 1980s. Although the exiled families were given homes in border camps, Thailand does not officially recognise refugees, or provide an asylum process. For years, fears of landmines, renewed conflict, retribution and a lack of economic opportunity has left many wary of returning. Over the past 30 years, some have chosen to be resettled in third countries, such as the United States, while others made their own way back to Myanmar.

According to the Karen Refugee Committee, there are 120,000 Myanmar refugees living in nine camps along the Thai border. The Thai foreign ministry puts the number at 103,000.

 

NLD moves to clean up the jade trade

In one of the NLD-backed government’s most visible efforts to reform a national sore spot, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation announced a moratorium in July on issuing new or renewing existing gem and jade mining licences. The ministry added that the freeze would only be lifted after by-laws to the Myanmar Gemstones Law are put into effect and change the conditions at mining and gemstone production sites.

The NLD has faced calls to reform the troubled multi-billion dollar industry from human rights activists, environmentalists and foreign governments since even before taking power in April. Much opposition centres on the threats faced by miners, many of them itinerant workers who have been injured and killed by the hundreds in more than 40 recorded tailings landslides since the beginning of 2015. There is also widespread resentment over the looting of Myanmar’s natural mineral wealth under the current system, particularly its unparalleled jade deposits. A 2015 report by resource watchdog and advocacy group Global Witness estimated that the illicit, untaxed jade trade totalled up to US$31 billion in 2014, equal to half of Myanmar’s GDP.

Since the licence freeze, over 2500 permits for jade and gem blocks expired in the second half of 2016, according to ministry data, almost 1000 of which are in the Hpakant and Lone Khin mining areas of Kachin State. It will take until 2021 before permits to all of the 19,000 mining blocks across the country expire.

 

Earthquake damages Bagan

On the evening of August 24, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck 26 kilometres (16 miles) west of Chauk, Magwe Region, killing three, injuring five, and sending tremors as far afield as Dhaka and Bangkok. The quake damaged 397 temples in Bagan, 36 of which incurred severe destruction, including the iconic Sulamani, Tayoke Pyay Min and Pyathatgyi temples, as well as more in Salay, Sagaing and Mrauk-U. Many had to be covered to prevent further damage by monsoon season rains, and cars were temporarily barred from approaching Tharbar Gate.

Over K3 billion (US$2.2 million) was raised to help fund repairs, including $1 million from China, and the Myanmar Tourism Federation pledged to double the percentage of entrance fees dedicated to upkeep from 2 to 4 percent. UNESCO officials were also on the ground to catalogue damage and train volunteers in restoration best practices. Restoration work, estimated to take one year, is underway but moving slowly as many voices, including the state counsellor, have urged patience, citing previous shoddy restoration work undertaken after a 1975 earthquake that damaged more than 600 pagodas.

The August earthquake damage came at a particularly inopportune moment, as Bagan prepares to apply for UNESCO World Heritage Status. The tremor also shed light on the sometimes uneasy relationship between historical conservation and the demands of tourism, as well as the lack of preparedness for a larger earthquake ever-lurking along the Sagaing Fault.

 

Eleven Media reporter murdered

In many ways, 2016 has been a terrifying year for the press in Myanmar, with defamation laws applied with a new level of vigour, death threats sent to members of the press over coverage of the ongoing military counter-insurgency operation in Rakhine State, and a Sittwe-based editor’s home bombed in March. The year drew to a close with the appalling murder of a well-liked and respected reporter in Monywa.

On the morning of December 13, Ko Soe Moe Tun’s body was found on the side of the road near a golf course, his skull fractured and his face bearing bruises and cuts. Police believe the 35-year-old reporter for Eleven Media was brutally beaten to death in a premeditated and possibly retributive attack. A wooden stick found near the crime site was believed to have been the weapon used in the attack.

Two KTV managers have been arrested in connection with the murder. The suspects were among the last people Ko Soe Moe Tun had contact with by phone the day before he was killed. Before his death, Ko Soe Moe Tun had written about KTVs that unofficially double as illegal brothels as well as illegal logging. Both his Mandalay editor and his wife believe he was murdered in response to something he had written.

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