Phone Maw Day Marked in Burma for First Time Since 1989

By NYEIN NYEIN / THE IRRAWADY| March 20, 2012 | 

 For the first time in decades, former student activists openly commemorated a key event in the history of Burma’s pro-democracy movement—the killing of a Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT) student who became the first casualty of a crackdown on the 1988 popular uprising against military rule.

Some 200 activists and political leaders, including Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi of the 88 Generation Students group and National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, gathered in Rangoon’s Shwegondaing Township on Tuesday to mark the occasion.

Human Rights Day—also known as Phone Maw Day after the name of the RIT student who was gunned down by security forces on March 13, 1988—has not been publicly commemorated in Burma since 1989, when activists declared it a national day to campaign for human rights reforms.

Speaking at today’s event, Min Ko Naing called on his fellow activists and leaders to do more to raise public awareness of human rights issues, saying that it was “not enough just to hold a ceremony.”

“It is important to work toward the improvement of human rights in Burma,” he said.
Noting that “this is the first time in two decades that we have been allowed to assemble to celebrate this occasion,” Ko Ko Gyi also called for a concerted effort to raise human rights standards in the country.

Suu Kyi, meanwhile, emphasized the need for unity to achieve this goal, saying “we must work in unity for every success.”

At today’s event, the former students, who were the witnesses of that time, recounted their experiences  and recited poems that reflect the history of the past 24 years.

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Villagers Protest Dawei Dam

By NYEIN NYEIN/ THE IRRAWADDY Thursday, March 15, 2012

More than 2,300 villagers in the town of Anyarphyar have signed a petition against the construction of a hydropower dam on the river outside their village in Tenasserim Division. The petition was sent to President Thein Sein on Monday.

The villagers are protesting that the dam will flood their fields. Myint Aung, a committee member of the village administration in Anyarphyar, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that “if the village is inundated, it will never recover.”

The site for the dam project is located some 20 km east of the Dawei Economic Zone and is scheduled to be one of at least two hydropower projects that will provide electricity to the multi-billion-dollar industrial plant and deep-sea port.

The project has been contracted to the Delco Company, based in Rangoon, which is also involved in tin mining in the area.

Construction of the 175-foot-high dam began in November and is scheduled to take three years to complete. 

Apart from Anyarphyar, three other villages will be affected by the project: Darthwekyaut, Satechaung and Nyaungchaung. In total, more than 9,000 acres of cultivable land will be lost, say local farmers who mostly grow rubber, betel and cashew nuts.

“Our losses will be enormous,” said a farmer who asked not to be identified. “A one-year-old rubber tree is valued at 80,000 kyat [US $100] and can provide latex for more than 30 years.”

The villagers of Anyarphyar have also voiced complaints about the construction of a tunnel by the Myanmar Natural Energy Wave company, which will also destroy land and agriculture.

“They just came in and bulldozed about three acres of land,” said Myint Aung. “No representative of the company spoke to us about their plans.”

He said the petition was sent not only to the Burmese president, but to the Myanmar Human Rights Commission, the Ministry of Energy and various political parties, as well as to the Delco Company.

When contacted by The Irrawaddy, Delco’s head office in Rangoon declined to comment.
Delco is a private firm invested in tin-tungsten and mixed ore mining in Kanpuak, near Dawei, a project that was initiated in 2007.

It received a Build-Operate-Transfer agreement for the hydropower project at Dawei, or Tavoy, in 2010.

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