“I want to be a soldier, to fight,” 11-year-old Khin Soe Win said, glancing round at the other children sitting in the gleaming new classroom.
Another boy also has his hand in the air — he too wants to be a soldier.
The pair are in the village of Kwin Ka Lay in Myanmar’s Kayin State. It as at least 12 hours’ drive from the capital, Yangon, the last three hours having been traversed on dirt roads.
Illustration: Mountain people
It is not entirely clear who controls the surrounding area — there are Karen National Liberation Army checkpoints on the road, but also army patrols — white pickups packed with soldiers and machine guns on the cab roof.
The children are answering questions on what they might do when they leave school. One wants to be a nurse, another a builder, another a farmer. Khin Soe Win is unswayed.
“It is tiring and hard being a soldier, but I want to sacrifice for my country,” he said.
However, he and his friend do not want to fight for the Tatmadaw, the national army. They want to join the Karen National Liberation Army (KNKLA).
When he talks of country, his teacher explains, he means Kayin — what used to be known as Karen State.
The Karen are one of the 135 ethnic groups recognized by the Burmese Constitution, a minority who engaged in a six-decade fight with the central government. They might have signed a ceasefire and backed Aung San Suu Kyi in November last year’s historic elections, but the desire for self-determination remains undimmed and a natural skepticism in the region is just one of the new leader’s problems.
Five months on from the election that swept Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy into power, she now leads the country’s first civilian government since 1962. Simply winning enough votes to wrest power from Myanmar’s powerful military was seen by many as the greatest triumph of the woman known as “The Lady,” generating excitement at home and an international wave of goodwill. However, if her government is to be judged a success, it faces formidable challenges on its own doorstep.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s first challenge was to entrench her own position. Her hopes of securing the presidency were dashed by the refusal of the military to change the Constitution, which bars her from the role because her sons hold British citizenship. It was a setback, but one she sidestepped by taking on the new role of “state counselor” — effectively placing herself above Burmese President Htin Kyaw. She also holds the roles of minister of foreign affairs and minister of the president’s office. No one has been left in any doubt that she regards herself as being in charge.
However, the military has not relinquished its grip on power. The army retains control of three key ministries — defense, home affairs and border affairs — and has 25 percent of the seats in parliament. Any changes to the Constitution require a 75 percent-plus-one majority, and last month Myanmar Armed Forces commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing made it clear that he saw no need for further liberalization.
“The Tatmadaw has steadfastly held on to the multiparty system for five years and progress has also been made. During the next, second, five-year phase, deviating from the present situation will not be accepted,” he said.
Aung San Suu Kyi might hope that further constitutional change will come sooner rather than later, but in the meantime she has a dysfunctional country to run.
“This is one of the most corrupt countries in the world,” a senior Western diplomat said last week, trying to dampen some of the rampant optimism that her victory has generated. “Bad things happen here every day. You will see problems everywhere.”
Myanmar is rich in resources, including oil, timber, gas and gems, but remains one of the world’s poorest countries. It lacks a sense of unity. There has been an exodus of young people seeking work in neighboring Thailand; people trafficking is endemic; there are myriad civil rights violations; most of the main rebel groups have refused to sign up to the so-called national ceasefire.
Then there are the Rohingya — stateless Muslims denied a vote or the chance to stand in November last year’s elections. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced since 2012 after clashes with Buddhist nationalists. It amounts to the to-do list from hell.
Driving east out of the capital, the built-up area quickly gives way to countryside. The traffic, bumper to bumper in the city, thins out. Many people travel in makeshift buses fashioned out of flatbed trucks, with chrome metal frames built over the top. Passengers are crammed in tightly: Some hang off the back.
Many men wear the wraparound sarongs known as lungis. Women carry umbrellas unfurled to keep off the sun, their faces painted in a white paste — thanakha — which serves as both a cosmetic and a sun screen.
The landscape is dotted with gilded Buddhist stupas, some of them enormous. Several are under construction, festooned with necklaces of bamboo scaffolding.
The European Journalism Centre has arranged a series of meetings in villages in Kayin State, where the EU is funding development projects with some of the £550 million (US$787 million) it has pledged to spend in Myanmar by 2020 in the hope of helping the new government tackle some of its most pressing problems.
The first destination is the town of Hpa-An. As the road pushes farther into the countryside and turns south, there are fish farms and rough huts on stilts, water buffalo in the fields, water melon stalls by the roadside. Monks in deep red robes walk along the roadside, soliciting donations.
In the village of Kawt Ka Lway, some of the older residents explain how most families here have at least a couple of children working in Thailand, which is less than 100km away. Daw Lay Phyu is 85 and bent 90° at the waist. She walks with a stick but insists on living alone in a large hardwood house raised on stilts. Two of her daughters are in Thailand working as housemaids, while one son works there selling snacks, another in a plastics factory.
Only one daughter, Daw Ngwe Thin, 55, remains living nearby. She said she only stayed because she was worried about leaving her mother alone. Two of her own daughters have also gone to Thailand to find work.
“Incomes here are so low, everyone wants to go to Thailand for work. There has not been fighting here for years but there is just no money here. We want our children back and factories to come for the village and the road to be mended, and if we can have electricity we can make profits for our lives and our children,” she said.
There are electricity cables running between posts down the main street of the village, but they are not connected to the houses. The village is clean and tidy, but desperately poor. Aid groups are working with some of the villagers. Ngwe Thin has borrowed money from them to buy a pig, which gave birth to seven piglets that she sold to raise money. The money is important — there is no state pension and the number of people in the country over the age of 60 is predicted to rise from 9 percent to 19 percent by 2050.
In the offices of the Pa-O ethnic group in Hpa-An, it is civil rights that vex the workers who have been recruited to tackle corruption and police indifference to crime.
Without help from the police, the workers say, they are limited in what they can do, other than plead the cases of those they are trying to help. They rattle off the challenges: Land grabs by members of the military, rapes, child labor, trafficking, domestic violence and forced labor.
Former professor Khin Than Htwe, 58, describes how two children abandoned by their parents were sold to a tea shop by their neighbor.
The children lived on Bilu Kyun Island, a place named after the ogres which according to legend once inhabited it, she said.
The children were looked after by a female neighbor after their parents split up and went away to work. However, the neighbor came to hear that the owner of a tea shop in the city of Mayyamline, across the water on the mainland, needed waiters. So she sold the children, who were about seven years old, for 700,000 kyat (US$594).
The tea shop was near the university and a student from the island saw the children working. He informed their grandmother, who lived on the island. She went to the tea shop to demand that the owner release the children, but he refused. He had paid for them and they were his.
“The grandmother came to us and we went to the tea shop and negotiated with the owner,” Khin Than Htwe said. “He said we could buy them back, but we did not have the money. Every day, we went to see him, to explain about child labor and how he could go to jail. In the end, he handed them over to make us go away.”
The group informed the parents, who ignored them. They did not waste their time with the police.
“We don’t believe in the police. If they get money they will do something, but the minimum they demand is 50,000 kyat. They don’t want to do anything if they don’t think they will get money,” Khin Than Htwem said. “It shouldn’t happen. Children should be in school. If they are in a tea shop or a factory, it is a loss to the country.”
About a quarter of children go to work in the city, and it is more prevalent in the rural areas, Khin Than Htwe said.
They are only given food as payment, no money, and there is trafficking into China too — teenage girls mainly. Their parents let them go to work in Thailand’s prawn and fish industries and they are trafficked from there.
The road out of Hpa-An runs alongside wooded hills before the landscape begins to become flatter. After a couple of hours the vehicles turn on to the dirt track that leads to Kwin Ka Lay, another three hours away. Now there are only occasional villages and river after river to cross. In the monsoon season, the village can only be reached by boat.
Buddhist prayer flags line the road around shrines. There are country-made vehicles with more than a hint of Mad Max about them: A small tractor engine or generator fixed to the end of a long girder, two tractor tires at the front, a cart bolted to the rear. The rider, masked against the dust, sits on the girder and steers with the aid of two long handles. Behind the driver, men and women sit on straw on the flat bed of the cart.
This area is the territory of the KNLA’s Brigade 6, but since the ceasefire the army is also present. The Karen National Union, the political wing of the KNLA, signed a preliminary ceasefire in 2012 and the KNLA agreed a ceasefire code of conduct with the military in November last year. It holds, up to a point, but the Karen want the army out of the area entirely. The army has other ideas.
Kwin Ka Lay is a mixed village — Buddhists and Christians living alongside each other. In the Buddhist monastery, three KNU men sit on the wooden floor. Arbram, 42, wears a black beret with a gold KNLA badge. He has a red-and-white striped woven Karen top, as do Nay Gay, 29, and Hai Hku, 43. They all want a federal state.
“We want the government to remove the military,” Arbram said. “It is like being in prison. There is no freedom of movement.”
“There is a saying in Myanmar: You need to believe, but you also need to act. The idea is that 50 percent [of me] believes in this new government, but 50 percent [is prepared to] take action in case things go wrong,” he added.
Nam Paw Lay Lay Wah, 35, has lived in the village all her life and vividly remembers the fighting when she was a child. She hopes she has seen the last of it.
“We had a bunker in our house. When there was fighting we would run to the bunker. I remember my sister and my dad were in the garden at the farm and the soldiers used to pass by there, so the KNU dropped bombs on the area. There were two big trees and my sister and my dad were trying to shelter under them. My dad grabbed my sister and a moment later a bomb nIt was like this until I was 18,” she said.
It was not just the military who lost out in November last year’s elections; many of the ethnic parties found themselves marginalized as voters decided that the only way to ensure change was to back Aung San Suu Kyi. However, in their hearts, the people here remain Karen, Nam Paw Lay Lay Wah said.
“With the new elections taking place, I was really happy, but I do not expect that much from this new government because I know that there are so many things to be taken care of in this country,” she said.
“In five years, it will be impossible to change a whole nation, but I believe there is a will to change. Maybe if they win yet another election, things will start to really change. Also, I do not have complete faith in this ceasefire agreement because it is just a signature on a paper. The peace process is very fragile, everyone knows that. I want to see it work but whether we have enough patience I don’t know,” she said.
The National League for Democracy manifesto supported a federal union, but back in Yangon there seems little agreement on how that might be achieved, given the army’s grip on constitutional change.
U Aung Shin — a member of the NLD’s central executive committee who was imprisoned from 2000 to 2009 for his involvement with the party — said the international community must exert pressure for change.
“Assistance of international actors is essential. We need a better relationship between the military and civilians,” he said. “Their attitude should be government from a democratic way, to change the mindset of the military to stay away from dictatorship.”
U Tin Maung Oo — a decorated former infantry officer and member of the parliamentary commission for legal affairs and special issues — agrees.
“People welcome federalism. But if you can’t get agreement from the military you can’t change the Constitution. We need a good military/civilian relationship,” he said.
However, neither he nor anyone else seems able to suggest how that might be achieved if the military is unwilling to bend.
A couple of days later, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck Myanmar. It was a big quake, but originated far beneath the surface and there was little damage. Earthquakes can send shockwaves around the world, but many other factors determine whether there is any significant impact at the epicenter.
Those who voted for The Lady must hope that the same does not apply in politics.
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