Ex-generals resign from MEHL board over conflicts of interest - myanmar-now

Ex-generals resign from MEHL board over conflicts of interest - myanmar-now

Paid to Pray? USDP Officials Arrange ‘Rent-A-Crowds’ For Pro-Wirathu Protests

Attendees at protests in support of the fugitive monk were paid and bused in, a source says, with many unaware who they were marching and praying for.

Local officials from the opposition Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) helped organise rent-a-crowds for a series of rallies in Yangon to support the fugitive monk Wirathu, a Myanmar Now investigation has found. 

Attendees at demonstrations and public prayers were bused in from Yangon’s outskirts with offers of free trips to Shwedagon pagoda and in some cases paid cash to attend, participants and a source close to the USDP said. 

In many cases the USDP officials did not tell attendees they would be marching in support of the notorious monk, who is wanted by police on charges of sedition.

The USDP has denied the allegations, saying it was not the party’s business if some of its members attended the rallies of their own accord. 

Wirathu has evaded arrest since May 28, when a warrant was issued in relation to a speech he made attacking the government. In response his supporters organised a series of rallies and prayers where they chanted slogans including “Free Sayadaw U Wirathu from worry”. 

The organisers’ alleged use of incentives and misleading claims to entice people to join the rallies is a sign of waning popular support for Wirathu, whose political influence declined markedly after the National League for Democracy, a party he staunchly opposes, came to power in 2016. 

Maung Min Min, 15, said men who claimed to be USDP officials came to his village of West Oboe in Twante township on June 11 and asked him and a friend if they would like to join a free pilgrimage tour to Shwedagon pagoda.  

They never got to visit Shwedagon, instead organisers took the pair, along with eight others from their village, to a gathering of around 1,000 people near the Tooth Relic pagoda in Mayangone township, he told Myanmar Now. 

After they arrived they were made to stand along lines on the floor and repeat prayers, he said. “They called out at us using this thing that made sound,” he added, referring to a megaphone. “They brought us food.” 

He and his friend were never told they were attending a gathering in support of Wirathu.

Ten other participants who spoke to Myanmar Now during the gathering indicated they did not know who the prayers were for. 

“They said a monk was arrested and they wanted to hold a prayer for him,” said 65-year-old Daw Nyein, also from Twante, adding that she was told she would be able to visit a pagoda. 

“I don’t know which monk. But praying is good in Buddhism,” she added. 

Men who appeared to be organisers at the rallies repeatedly tried to prevent Myanmar Now from interviewing the demonstrators. 

Aung Myat Tun, the USDP chairman in West Oboe village, said he helped gather people to join the prayers but did not do so under any directions from his party. He spread the word to villagers because a man driving a truck said he would take them on a free pilgrimage tour. 

When Myanmar Now asked for the driver’s contact details he said he couldn’t provide them because his phone was broken. 

Twante township’s USDP chairman Dr Thein Zaw Myint said he did not direct anyone at the village level to gather people for the rallies. 

A source close to the USDP in Hlaing Tharyar told Myanmar Now a group of around 40 men from a squatter community in the township were each paid 10,000 kyat to attend a rally on June 10, then given 3,000 a day to attend rallies after that, as well as compensation for travel and food expenses. 

USDP spokesperson Thein Tun Oo told Myanmar Now that none of its members received money from the party to attend the prayers. The decision to attend was a personal decision, the spokesperson added, and the USDP would not interfere unless members violated party rules. 

“They joined the rally of their own free will and personal judgement,” he said.

After a rally on June 12 at Shwedagon pagoda, Myanmar Now reporters saw around 30 attendees board three small trucks and then followed them. One truck ended up at the USDP office in Hlaing Tharyar township.

The same truck also carried Wirathu supporters to another rally at Botahtaung Pagoda in downtown Yangon the following day, June 13.

One passenger on the truck was Myo San Win, who according to posts on the official USDP Facebook page is one of the party’s township executive members.   

When Myanmar Now called Myo San Win’s cellphone, a man who declined to give his name asked “Am I going to face charges?” before hanging up. 

During one rally near Shwedagon pagoda a Myanmar Now reporter posing as a curious bystander asked a participant how one could go about joining future demonstrations. A middle-aged man responded: “Where do you live? Isn’t there a USDP office in your ward?”

Then he called out to a man in a white shirt with a ponytail, who he gave the nickname Ko San Shay, or Ko Long Hair. Myanmar Now later identified the man with the ponytail as Kyaw Kyaw, an active organiser for the USDP in South Dagon township.

He appears in several photos dressed bearing the party’s logo on the Facebook page of the USDP South Dagon branch.

Reached by phone, Kyaw Kyaw said attending the Wirathu rally was his own decision. “Party is party. Nationalism is nationalism. We are protecting Buddhism,” he added. 

At the rally, the middle-aged man gestured at Myanmar Now’s reporter and told Kyaw Kyaw, “this girl wants to join us.” Kyaw Kyaw replied: “Can we trust her?” 

(Editing by Nyunt Win and Joshua Carroll, reporting by Htun Khaing, Sai Zaw, Phyo Thiha Cho, Chan Thar, Khin Moh Moh Lwin, Aung Nyein Chan, Kayzon Nwe, and Mung San Aung)

Democratic Voice of Burma Took $75,000 Loan From Wirathu-Supporting Gold Tycoon’s Company

The broadcaster says its coverage of the company remained impartial, but its journalists failed to ask about links to extremists during interviews

The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) borrowed 100m kyat ($75k) from a nationalist-linked gold mining company just weeks before officials launched an investigation into the firm for failing to hand over bullion that it owed to the government.

The December 2016 agreement raises questions about the broadcaster’s coverage of scandals surrounding the National Prosperity Company (NPC) and its chairman Soe Htun Shein, who was arrested Wednesday on charges of mining without a permit.

Executives at DVB say the loan did not affect their ability to report on the company impartially, and that a former head of advertising made the decision to take the money without informing his superiors.

“If we had known the money was to be borrowed from Soe Htun Shein, we would have stopped it,” Aye Chan Naing, DVB’s executive director and chief editor, told Myanmar Now. “But the loan was already taken by the time we found out. We were only informed after a month,” he added.

However, a contract for the loan seen by Myanmar Now says the two companies had previously done business. And in 2018 DVB once again entered into a business relationship with NPC; this time for a sponsorship deal.

Aye Chan Naing said he presumed the previous business relationship referred to in the contract was also a sponsorship deal.

He added that the sponsorship agreement was above board. “There is no secret, it’s a commercial sponsor,” he said.

After the 2016 loan was agreed, DVB twice interviewed NPC chairman Soe Htun Shein - once in early 2017 and again the following year.

On both occasions the interviewers failed to ask him about his links to Buddhist extremists. Soe Htun Shein has on several occasions donated money - and sometimes solid gold - to fund the activities of the firebrand monk Wirathu and his allies.

Aye Chan Naing said the tycoon’s links to hardliners weren’t well known when the first interview happened. But the BBC’s Burmese service reported as early as 2015 that NPC had donated gold to the anti-Muslim group Ma Ba Tha.

By the time of the second interview, the loan had been repaid, he added. He said there was no particular reason the reporter didn’t ask about links to hardliners on that occasion and that the loan played no role in the decision to schedule either interview.

“We would never compromise our independence,” he said. “We would rather abolish the whole of DVB.”

Soe Htun Shein’s staff sent a list of questions that they wanted DVB to ask him ahead of the second interview, said Nay Thwin Nyein, the journalist who interviewed him. But DVB rejected his request and only asked questions prepared by its news desk, he added.

Another story of public interest concerning NPC was its row with the government, during which the company defied an order to cease operations at its gold mine in Moehti Moemhi, Mandalay region.

Many of the company’s top executives have been arrested or gone into hiding after being charged with offences related to the company’s defiance of the government.

Soe Htun Shein was declared a fugitive earlier this year. Police hunted him in Thailand for several weeks before his arrest after Myanmar Now reported that he had been spotted at an airport in Bangkok on October 14.

Aye Chan Naing sent Myanmar Now several links to stories DVB had aired about the Moehti Moemi scandal, including protests against the company and a segment drawing attention to the fact that authorities had yet to arrest Soe Htun Shein.

Credible source

DVB was established in 1992 and had to operate outside of Myanmar because their reporting on human rights violations would never have been tolerated by the military junta.

The outlet has long been seen as one of the most credible sources of news from Myanmar and won praise for its coverage of the 2007 monk-led uprising and Cyclone Nargis in 2008, as well as its investigative work on the junta’s ties with North Korea.

It employs hundreds of staff and has a yearly operating budget of millions of dollars.

NPC paid the loan to DVB in two installments and charged interest of 13% a year, according to the contract seen by Myanmar Now.

The contract also stated that DVB “needs money to operate” and that NPC “has agreed to help as the two companies have done business together before.” It did not give further details.

At the time of the loan, executives say DVB was facing financial problems because payments it was relying on from donor organisations had yet to arrive.

The broadcaster used the funds to rent office space in downtown Yangon for its advertising department.

The loan has now been fully paid off, said Aye Chan Naing. In fact it is now NPC that owes DVB money, he added. NPC signed a contract with them in April 2018 to sponsor a show called Fix It.

The company agreed to pay 2 million kyat per episode - a total of 48 million kyat for 24 episodes - in exchange for being promoted on the show, documents seen by Myanmar Now said.

But Aye Chan Naing says NPC still owes DVB 32 million kyats.

NPC told them in a letter in April this year that it was unable to pay off its debt because its gold mine had been shut down by the government.

“The money will be provided when the operations resume in Moehti Moemi,” the letter said.

NPC is also believed to be in legal trouble regarding 10 billion kyat it borrowed from Kanbawza Bank in 2016 or 2017. Thein Than Oo, a lawyer for NPC, told Myanmar Now in May that the bank was trying to file a lawsuit against the company at Yangon Regional Court. Kanbawza declined to comment.

Myanmar Now contacted NPC several times over the past few months regarding the Moehti Moemi gold mine, but the company did not respond.

‘The Tatmadaw is the mother and the father!’ - inside the militarised schools training Myanmar’s civil servants

Students are taught a ‘strict sense of obedience’ and must clap exactly 20 times at the end of each class.

PYIN OO LWIN -- About a hundred public servants were perched at their desks in an echoey lecture hall one afternoon in November, pens at the ready.

The students at the hall in Pyin Oo Lwin township were taking part in an eight-week course designed to train people taking on more senior government jobs.

Today’s lesson was on geopolitics. But some of the theories that Dr Tun Min shared about Myanmar’s place in the world were of questionable educational value.

Saudi Arabia, he declared, has offered to help Britain pay its multi-billion pound divorce bill when it leaves the European Union.

If the UK is taking money from a Muslim country, it’s little wonder that British media coverage of the Rohingya crisis has been so biased against Myanmar’s government, he mused.

“Is Saudi Arabia likely to be on our side or on ARSA’s?” he asked, referring to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, whose deadly attacks on police posts in August 2017 were used to justify a massive military crackdown against the Rohingya.

When asked by Myanmar Now, Dr Tun Min was unable to offer any evidence for his claim that Saudi Arabia was helping to pay Britain’s Brexit divorce bill.

This branch of the Central Institute for Civil Service, a 900-acre complex of one-storey brick buildings built in 1999, is one of two facilities where those who make up the backbone of government services in Myanmar go to train.

Thousands of managerial staff who help administer policy - from immigration, health and taxation to energy, agriculture and construction - are trained at the institute every year.

The first facility, located in Hlegu, Yangon region, was founded by the generals in 1965 and was “a place where military propaganda was hammered into the employees,” said, U Kyee Myint, a former student.

Since Aung San Suu Kyi’s government came to power, the institute has undergone changes aimed at bringing it in line with a more democratic era.

There are no more military training drills, and students no longer have to all wear the same blue uniform; instead they attend class in their ordinary work clothes.

But, as with the country at large, the powerful influence of the military is still apparent at the centers.

The rectors are both retired military men, while some lectures draw on army propaganda and Buddhist nationalist rhetoric.

“The Tatmadaw is the mother, the Tatmadaw is the father!” Dr Tun Min declared to students in late 2017, according to Dr Soe Thura Zaw, a dental health officer at a public hospital in Mogok township and a former student at the institute. (In Myanmar, the term civil servant covers a broader range of government employees than in some other countries.)

At the end of class, Soe Thura Zaw said, students are instructed to clap exactly 20 times.

“One of our key objectives is to imbue the civil servants with a strict sense of obedience,” said U Nyi Nyi San, rector at the Pyin Oo Lwin facility and a retired lieutenant colonel.  

“Top officials at government ministries often tell us that’s what they expect most from their staff,” he said.

But he added: “We don’t promote any propaganda.”

Despite the NLD’s landslide 2015 victory, the military has maintained significant influence over large numbers of government employees.

But the civilian administration signalled its intention to wrest some of this control back earlier this month by announcing plans to move the powerful General Administration Department out from under the military-controlled home affairs ministry.

The department’s 36,000 staff have significant reach, operating in every township in the country collecting taxes, maintaining law and order and settling disputes.  

‘Traitor maggots’

Dr Tun Min concluded his class in November by showing a collage of photos. In one, an image of a Buddhist flag was accompanied by the phrase, “Myanmar Theravada Buddhism must last forever”.

Beneath it was a picture of a dead Myanmar policeman lying in a pool of blood and another of Russian President Vladimir Putin above a quote that has previously been falsely attributed to him: “Russia does not need the minorities, the minorities need Russia”.

During the 2017 class, Dr Soe Thura Zaw claims, the lecturer criticised the NLD by saying the peace process was failing because the party was “unwilling” to make it work.

The doctor said he debated the lecturer and suggested that if armed groups are unwilling to achieve peace, the government’s efforts are bound to fail.

“He ended the lecture by saying he could swear an oath with blood from his arm that the Tatmadaw wants peace,” Dr Soe Thura Zaw said.

The lecturer denies criticising the NLD, and says he only stated that Aung San Suu Kyi once urged ethnic armed groups not to rush into signing ceasefire agreements before her party could form a majority government.

He has also aired his views on the state counsellor and the military on his Facebook page.

In one post, he appeared to reference unfounded rumours that foreign armed forces were planning to invade Myanmar.

“The Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Services is preparing for foreign wars together with ethnic leaders,” he wrote in September last year. “Wait and see where the traitor maggots run.”

In another he shared a cartoon that portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi, with help from the US and the UN, pulling an image of Myanmar apart.

‘Like a Ma Ba Tha dhamma’

Late last year, Soe Thura Zaw decided to post on Facebook about his experience at the institute. He mentioned in the post, which went viral, that lecturers had told students not to marry people from different religions, and not to spend money at shops owned by people from other religions.

The political science lectures were like a “Ma Ba Tha dhamma talk,” he wrote, referring to the group led by nationalist monks that was officially declared unlawful in 2017.

After the post, he was accused of violating regulations for government staff and was questioned by superiors at the Ministry of Health in Mandalay.

In response, hundreds of former students from the course took part in a social media campaign by writing “We stand with Dr Soe Thura Zaw” on their Facebook timelines. Former students who studied at the institute with him posted messages saying that he was telling the truth about the course.

The ministry of health called a press conference last month to address the controversy. Minister Dr Myint Htwe told reporters Dr Soe Thura Zaw was a “hardworking and intelligent” person, and there is no plan to take further action against him.

‘No benefit’

Another former student recalled a lecturer using more subtle methods to express their dissatisfaction with the NLD leader.

Naing Htoo Aung, a medical doctor, said that during a political science lecture in 2015, the lecturer dimmed sections of patriotic words and phrases that matched up with parts of the NLD leader’s name - the implication being that she was not patriotic.

“When the words ‘Pyi Daung Suu Sait Dat’ [Union Spirit] were shown on the projector, the word ‘Suu’ was dimmer than other words,” the former student said.

“In another sentence that contained the words ‘Amyotha A Chin Chin Chit Kyi Yinne Yey’ [friendship among citizens], the word ‘Kyi’ had a lighter color. It was like that,” he said.

Dr Naing Htoo Aung found the course overall to be unhelpful.

“The good thing was I made a lot of friends, I got better at socializing. That’s the only good thing about the course - the rest offered no benefit at all,” he said.

“These courses are just a waste of government funding,” said Dr Soe Thura Zaw.

Rector U Nyi Nyi San said he found that doctors are usually the most difficult to discipline because there is a shortage of medical staff. So the civil service board must accept them even if they fail the course.

At the institute’s Hlegu branch in November, associate professor Yin Yin Nwe taught a political science class of about 100 that included police officers and judicial employees.  

Holding a wireless microphone, she echoed points that appeared in school textbooks under military rule.

She explained that military leaders had little choice but to maintain power in Myanmar for decades after a 1962 coup, and stated that the 2008 constitution was passed with public support.

In fact the referendum to approve the charter was considered a sham by local and international rights groups.

She also suggested to students that foreign powers were using the media to “interfere” in Myanmar’s affairs and were disseminating fake news.

The lecturer told Myanmar Now she taught her classes based on directions from her superiors.

‘Brainwashing’

Rectors U Nyi Nyi San and U Aung Tin Soe, who heads the Hlegu facility, said the even though they are both former military men, the courses are taught according to the policy of the current government.

One of the biggest changes under the NLD, they said, is that military drills have been replaced with lessons on subjects such as management, economics, social sciences, law and English.

About 10,000 government staff a year receive training at the facilities, which each have a budget of three billion kyat, or roughly US$2 million.

The deputy information minister U Aung Hla Tun, who attended a course at the institute in 1983, said that while he made lots of friends and learnt useful things such as accounting, he also experienced “brainwashing” while there.

He said he supports further changes to modernise the courses at the institute.

“We don’t want to close them down. But the course curriculum needs to be changed a lot,” he said.

(Editing by Joshua Carroll)

2020-07-21 10:28:33Z
https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/ex-generals-resign-from-mehl-board-over-conflicts-of-interest

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