PEACE Info (July 20, 2018)

PEACE Info (July 20, 2018) − Tatmadaw intransigence and the quest for peace − NMSP worse off after signing accord: official − Can China be an agent of stability in northern Myanmar? − Tatmadaw Denies Killing 6 Female TNLA Medics in Captivity − Tatmadaw Accused of Torturing Shan Civilians in Loilem Township − Tatmadaw incessantly violates human rights during 21st Century Panglong Conference - SHRF − Decade-long WFP operations continue in Kachin State despite challenges − ဒီမိုကေရစီဖက္ဒရယ္ျပည္ေထာင္စု ထူေထာင္ေရးႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးနည္းလမ္းျဖင့္ ေျဖရွင္းသည့္မူကို ဒီခ်ဳပ္ဆက္လက္က်င့္သံုးမည္ − ၂၁ ပင္လံုမွာ ေဆြးေႏြးမႈပံုစံေတြ ေျပာင္းလဲဖို႔ ရိွလာႏိုင္ − ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေကာ္မရွင္ ႏွင့္ KIO တို႕ခ်င္းမိုင္တြင္ အလြတ္သေဘာ ေတြ႕ဆံု − ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေကာ္မရွင္နဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြ တုိက္ပဲြေတြေလွ်ာ့ခ်ေရး ေဆြးေႏြးဖုိ႔ရွိ − ယုံၾကည္မႈရွိရင္ ျမန္မာျပည္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းမယ္လုိ႔ ထုိင္း ပါေမာကၡ ေျပာဆုိ − NCA လက္မွတ္ထုိးထားသည့္ ေဒသမ်ားတြင္ စီးပြားေရးျမႇင့္တင္ရန္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ တိုင္းရင္းသားလုပ္ငန္းရွင္အသင္း ဖြဲ႕စည္း − RCSS/SSA အေနျဖင့္ တပ္သားသစ္ အဓမၼစုေဆာင္းမွုမရွိဟု ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးယြက္စစ္ေျပာ − တပ္မေတာ္ သိမ္းထားသည့္ စခန္း ၂ ခု ျပန္ေပးရန္ NMSP ေတာင္းဆိုထား − လက္နက္ႏွင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးလဲလွယ္သည္ဆုိေသာ KNU/KNLA (PC) မွ ဗိုလ္မွဴးေစာေဒြးေအာင္သည္ ေျမယာကိစၥျဖင့္ ဖမ္း၀ရမ္းထုတ္ခံထားရသူ ျဖစ္ဟုဆုိ − တအာင္းအဖြဲ႕ဝင္မ်ား တိုက္ပြဲအတြင္းေသဆုံးခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း တပ္မေတာ္ရွင္းလင္း − TNLA တပ္ဖြဲ႕၀င္ေဆးမွဴး အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား တုိက္ပြဲအတြင္း ေသဆုံးျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း တပ္မေတာ္ထုတ္ျပန္ − ခႏၲီးတြင္ထားမည့္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္႐ုပ္တုကိစၥ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးရန္ နာဂအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား၏ ကမ္းလွမ္းခ်က္ ျငင္းပယ္ခံရ − ကယားျပည္နယ္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေၾကး႐ုပ္စိုက္ထူေရး အျငင္းပြားမွုပိုျပင္းထန္ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 1 of 28 Tatmadaw intransigence and the quest for peace A speech by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has highlighted the rigid inflexibility of the Tatmadaw’s pursuit of peace on its terms. Friday, July 20, 2018 | By SITHU AUNG MYINT | FRONTIER Tatmadaw delegates to the 21st Century Panglong Union Peace Conference listen to the opening speeches on July 11. (Nyein Su Wai Kyaw Soe | Frontier) THE MUCH-DELAYED third session of the 21st Century Panglong Union Peace Conference convened in Nay Pyi Taw on July 11. The opening ceremony heard speeches from State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Tatmadaw Commander-in- Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Karen National Union chairman Saw Mutu Say Poe and the deputy chair of the Arakan National Party, Daw Aye Nu Sein. The Tatmadaw leadership has a critical role in the peace process and its attitude was reflected in Min Aung Hlaing’s speech. In light of his comments, is there a favourable climate for peace? As usual, the senior general delivered a long speech based heavily on history. First, he tried to explain that the emergence of ethnic armed groups and civil conflict was not because of the Tatmadaw. Such accusations were dangerous for the pursuit of peace, Min Aung Hlaing said. He also said that the Tatmadaw acted only to protect the administrative mechanism of the government and the lives, property and interests of the people – a comment that is not completely true. Since 1948, when Burma gained independence, the country has had 14 years of parliamentary democracy (including two years of a caretaker government under General Ne Win), nearly 50 years of military dictatorship and seven years of semi-democratic government since the transition began with the 2010 election. The civil conflict involving ethnic armed groups that occurred immediately after independence was the responsibility of the then parliamentary government. The fighting involving ethnic armed groups that occurred after Ne Win seized power in 1962 was the responsibility of the dictators who exercised state power through the Tatmadaw or the Tatmadaw itself. It is far from the truth to claim at the moment that the fighting between the Tatmadaw and the Kachin Independence Army is only occurring because the Tatmadaw is protecting the “administrative mechanism” of the government, and therefore the conflict is the responsibility of the National League for Democracy. In his speech, Min Aung Hlaing also rejected the arguments of armed groups that have refused to sign the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement on the grounds that they had already entered into bilateral ceasefire agreements. He reiterated that they must sign the NCA for the peace process to move forward. Page 2 of 28 “The government and the Tatmadaw are actively leading the peace process today not because we are weak, but because we are committed to [the] interests of [the] state and national ethnic people,” he said, adding that if all the groups that genuinely wanted peace observed the NCA then the sound of guns would be silenced. “All must control their own men, instead of giving groundless reasons,” he added, in comments directed to non-signatories of the NCA. The comment that the government and the Tatmadaw were not working for peace “because we are weak” caused disquiet among ethnic minorities and other groups, which regarded it as a threat. In his speech, Mutu Say Poe spoke of the important link between the peace process and constitutional reform. The NLD has also recently raised the issue of amending the constitution. Min Aung Hlaing referred to the issue in his speech, acknowledging the link between the peace process and changing the constitution. He said amendments to sections of the constitution had extended the rights of the states and regions, but added that any further changes would need to be based on procedures outlined in the charter. It was important to ensure that the 48 fundamental principles of the state enshrined in the constitution were maintained, he said. What Min Aung Hlaing meant is that any political agreements that emerge from the peace process will only be approved as amendments to the constitution if they have the support of more than 75 percent of MPs in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw – in which appointed Tatmadaw MPs hold 25 percent of the seats – and in some cases, by a national referendum. Of the 48 fundamental principles listed in the constitution, section 6(f) states that it is a consistent objective of the union for the Tatmadaw to participate in the national leadership role of the state. The Tatmadaw shows no indication of wanting to relinquish that role. Min Aung Hlaing said he wanted the peace process to be completed in 2020, warning that if the target was not met there was a danger of external influence and manipulation that would weaken the trust and understanding already achieved. The senior general said in his speech that the Tatmadaw was the only organisation in the country that represented its 52 million people. There must only be one armed organisation in the country and it is the Tatmadaw, he said, in another comment directed at ethnic armed groups. The speech by the senior general highlighted the Tatmadaw’s rigid insistence on peace at its terms, rather than through an agreement reached by negotiation and compromise. https://frontiermyanmar.net/en/tatmadaw-intransigence-and-the-quest-for-peace ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 3 of 28 NMSP worse off after signing accord: official Chan Thar | 20 Jul 2018 Conditions got worse for the New Mon State Party (NMSP) after signing the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) due to growing doubts about the intentions of the Tatmadaw (military), its Vice Chair Naing Han Thar said in an interview with The Myanmar Times. The NMSP, which signed the NCA on February 13, hasn’t been allowed to join the Joint Monitoring Committee and the military has seized three camps of the NMSP, he said. “For the NMSP, conditions have got worse since signing the NCA. The real attitude of the Tatmadaw can be seen. Any of the expected good things haven’t happened yet. During recent days, they occupied one of our camps in Mon State after sending a border guard force unit. Trust has been damaged severely and doubts are growing,” said Naing Han Thar. The NMSP, as a signatory of the NCA, attended the 21st Century Panglong Conference from July 11-16 in Nay Pyi Taw. It said that a national dialogue for Mon ethnic people was not held before the conference because of a decision by the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPJDC). “Before the signing [of the NCA], it seemed like we were being gratified. After it was signed, a UPDJC meeting was held at which we were told the area outside Mon State where we stationed our troops [New Mon State Army] would not be given to us, so we requested the place where the people are. They did not give it to us. They only gave approval to hold our meetings at locations that are under the authority of our forces,” said Naing Han Thar. The UPDJC designated a place to hold public meetings prior to the Mon national dialogue and decided to hold the dialogue in Ye city of Mon. “The UPDJC allowed it, but when we planned to do it, we were told not to gather more than 20 or 30 people in one place, which is nonsense. Even a cockfight draws 20 or 30 people. What we were going to do about a national dialogue? We aren’t happy about this restriction,” said Naing Han Thar. The NMSP armed forces have limited areas outside of Mon, and although it has a seat in the Union Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee, it cannot be a representative in the state Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee. Although there were no battles between the military and NMSP in 2017, the military captured Phayataung toll gate near the border town of Phayathonesu and Zeehnapin gate on the border between Mon and Kayin states.

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