PEACE Info (November 13, 2017)
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PEACE Info (November 13, 2017) Commentary on “As expectations fade, is the peace process in crisis?” As expectations fade, is the peace process in crisis? Two Mon parties agree to continue talks about merging Talks on Myitsone dam to continue, says China after minister’s comments Hearing ethnic voices on Myitsone State Counsellor exchanges views with Canadian PM in Vietnam Southeast Asia summit draft statement skips over Rohingya crisis Aung San Suu Kyi Is Benefiting from ASEAN's Silence on Myanmar's Rohingya Crisis အပစ္မရပ္ေတြ NCA ထိုးဖို႔ တ႐ုတ္ေျပာ NCA လက္မွတ္ထုိးရန္ ေျမာက္ပိုင္းအဖြဲ႕မ်ားကို တ႐ုတ္တိုက္တြန္း အစုိးရကုိယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ UWSA ဥကၠ႒တို႔ ပန္ဆန္းတြင္ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြး အစိုးရႏွင့္ မုိင္းလားအဖြဲ႕ ေတြ႕ဆံုေဆြးေႏြး အစိုးရၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေကာ္မရွင္နဲ႔ မုိင္းလားအဖဲြ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံု အစိုးရႏွင့္ ဝ ၊ မိုင္းလားတပ္ဖြဲ႔တို႔ ေတြ႔ဆံု၊ နယ္ေျမဖြ႔ံၿဖိဳးေရး ေဆြးေႏြး ေတြ႔ဆံုေရးဆိုင္ရာ သေဘာထားအတြက္ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း မဟာမိတ္မ်ား အစည္းအေ၀း ေခၚမည္ အစိုးရႏွင့္ NCA ညႇိႏိႈင္းမႈ ျပန္လည္သံုးသပ္မည့္ UNFC ထိပ္သီးအစည္းအေဝး က်င္းပမည္ ေကာ္သူးေလေျမယာႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲ ေၾကညာခ်က္ NCA ကို ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္ရာေရာက္ေၾကာင္း ျပည္နယ္ နယ္လံုဝန္ႀကီး ေကအင္န္ယူထံ ကန္႔ကြက္စာပို႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးမရွိလို႔ နယ္ေျမေအးခ်မ္းေရး မေဆာင္ရြက္ႏုိင္တာ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ကခ်င္၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ေျပာ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆုိင္ရာ စာတမ္းတစ္ေစာင္ကို ၂၁ ရာစုပင္လုံအစည္းအေ၀းသို႔ တင္သြင္းရန္စီစဥ္ ထုိင္းနယ္စပ္စစ္ေဘးဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမ်ားမွ ေနရပ္ျပန္ရန္ စာရင္းေပးသူ ေထာင္ဂဏန္းရွိဟု KRC ေျပာ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြ ေနရပ္ျပန္ႏုိင္ေရး အခက္အခဲေတြရွိေန AA ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ေမြးေန႔အထိမ္းအမွတ္ မီးပံုးပ်ံလႊတ္တင္ခဲ့သူကို ပုဒ္မ ၁၇(၁) ျဖင့္ ဖမ္းဆီး AA အဖြဲ႕အေနျဖင့္ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္အတြင္းစစ္ေရးလႈပ္ရွားျခင္းမျပဳသင့္ဟု CNF ေျပာၾကား တပ္မေတာ္သားမ်ားႏွင့္ အရပ္သားမ်ားလိုက္ပါေသာ စက္ေလွမ်ားကို AA ပစ္ခတ္၍ ေသဆံုးဒဏ္ရာရမႈရွိဟု ထုတ္ျပန္ ရကၡိဳင့္ တပ္မေတာ္ (AA) ျပန္ၾကားေရး တာဝန္ခံႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္ ပလက္၀ျမိဳ႔နယ္အတြင္း ရခိုင္လက္နက္ကိုင္နဲ႔ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္ တိုက္ပြဲေၾကာင့္ ေဒသခံေတြ တိမ္းေရွာင္ ပလက္ဝက ေအေအနဲ႔ တပ္မေတာ္ တိုက္ပြဲေၾကာင့္ စစ္ေဘးေရွာင္မ်ားလာ AA နဲ႔ တပ္မေတာ္ တုိက္ပဲြျပင္းထန္ တပ္သားသစ္အျဖစ္ ဖမ္းဆီးခံထားရသူေတြထဲက ေက်ာင္းသား ေက်ာင္းသူ ၁၄ ဦး လြတ္ေျမာက္ KIA ဖမ္းသြားတဲ့ အေဝးသင္ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ျပန္လြတ္လာ ဘ႑ာႏွစ္ ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေၾကာင့္ လာမည့္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေနာက္က်က်င္းပမည္ကို စိုးရိမ္ဟု NBF ထုတ္ျပန္ ၂၀၀၈ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပုံ အေျခခံဥပေဒ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး ဆႏၵျပပြဲ တာေမြဟစ္တုိင္ကြင္းတြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ အာဆီယံထိပ္သီးစညးေ၀းပြဲ္ ေၾကညာခ်က္မူၾကမ္း၌ ွ ဘဂၤါလီအေရးကိစၥ ခ်န္လွပ္ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 1 of 44 Commentary on “As expectations fade, is the peace process in crisis?” Posted By: Sai Wansai | on: November 13, 2017 The only way to resolve the armed conflict or silenced the gun fire is to change the hybrid civilian‐military to pure civilian rule. In other words, the military comes under the democratically elected civilian government. What is happening today in peace negotiation process arena is that there are two sources of power in administering the country, which means the military can do whatever it likes in everything it sees fit, including on how to go about with conducting the peace process, and the civilian authority could do very little in a lot of important issues and being forced to accept what the military is inclined to do. Take for example, regarding the policy of all‐inclusiveness of all Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs). Originally, Aung San Suu Kyi‐led NLD civilian part of the government wanted to go literally in involving all the EAOs. But later have to yield to the military’s wish to leave out the Northern Alliance – MNDAA, TNLA and AA. Another example is that the military goes about with its offensives against the EAOs, especially in Shan and Kachin States, posturing to be the sole protector of sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity, when in fact it should behave to accommodate in facilitating the ongoing peace negotiation process and refrain from armed confrontation. After all, isn’t the peace negotiation process all about adjusting and having shared responsibility on the issues of sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity? Why should the military then act as if these are all taken for granted, when in fact they are the main source of political grievances and dissatisfaction that have triggered the ongoing ethnic conflict in the first place? Many would still recall, during the President Thein Sein tenure that the military rejected the presidential directive to end the attacks on the EAOs so as to be conducive to the peace process, but has never listened and instead even escalated the conflict. The same thing is happening over and over again and it is not a wonder that all‐ inclusiveness cannot be achieved and the war with the EAOs could not be stopped. Thus, this hybrid civilian‐military rule will have to be changed. In short, the military has to listen to the civilian authority’s policy directive and discharge its duty accordingly and not acting according to its own policy formulation, which at times are against the civilian government’s directive. Until this civilian authority over the military is established, there is little hope that the guns would go silent and peace and reconciliation restored in the country. Link to the story: As expectations fade, is the peace process in crisis? Page 2 of 44 http://english.panglong.org/2017/11/13/commentary‐on‐as‐expectations‐fade‐is‐the‐ peace‐process‐in‐crisis/ ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ As expectations fade, is the peace process in crisis? Sunday, November 12, 2017 | By SITHU AUNG MYINT | FRONTIER The peace process is in trouble and a new way forward is needed to end the stalemates and posturing that have hampered negotiations. Soldiers from the Kachin Independence Army near Laiza. (Steve Tickner | Frontier) IT IS just over two years since the Union Solidarity and Development Party government and eight ethnic armed groups signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, as part of a peace process launched after the end of junta rule in 2011. It is 19 months since the National League for Democracy government took office and took control of the peace process, which State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has named her top priority and in which she has taken a leading role. There had been expectations that with Aung San Suu Kyi in charge of the process, peace would be achieved faster than might otherwise be possible. But these expectations have faded. This week I’d like to discuss if the peace process is in crisis. The state counsellor marked the second anniversary of the signing of the NCA by reaffirming that the peace process was making progress. She said that in the two years since the signing, political dialogue had begun with ethnic armed groups and agreement had been reached on 37 principles to form part of a future peace agreement. As well, there had been a considerable reduction in fighting in areas controlled by signatories of the NCA, where development projects had contributed to real improvements in living standards. Some ethnic armed groups and politicians rejected the claims of progress, noting that in the two years since the NCA was signed it had failed to attract more signatories. Others said there had been progress, but it was too slow. The peace process involves three groups: the NLD government elected by the people, the Tatmadaw and ethnic armed groups. Until the USDP government launched the peace process after taking office in 2011, the Tatmadaw and ethnic armed groups had negotiated with each other. Since taking charge of the peace process, the NLD government has assumed the role of mediator between the Tatmadaw and armed ethnic groups. A challenge for the peace process is the differences among the ethnic armed groups, which can be divided into three main blocs. The first is the eight groups that signed the NCA, which include the Karen National Union, Restoration Council of Shan State (Shan State Army‐South), and Chin National Front. They Page 3 of 44 are endeavouring to implement the agreement by maintaining ceasefires, reducing conflict, conducting political dialogue and launching development projects. However, the eight groups say they are facing difficulties and complain that progress is slow. Another group is the United Nationalities Federal Council, an alliance of ethnic groups including the New Mon State Party, which has set eight conditions for signing the NCA. Some progress was reported at talks last week between the UNFC and the government’s Peace Commission, but differences remain over military matters. Last week’s meetings were the seventh round of formal talks between the two sides since they began negotiations 16 months ago. The third group is the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee, and its members include the United Wa State Army and the Kachin Independence Army, two of the country’s biggest ethnic armed groups. It is essential to negotiate with the FPNCC if the sound of guns is to be silenced in Myanmar. The group is headed by the UWSA, which did not participate in the peace negotiations launched by the USDP government. The UWSA declined to sign the NCA on the grounds that it had signed a bilateral ceasefire with the Tatmadaw in 1989. After the NLD government hosted the first 21st Century Panglong Union Peace Conference in August‐September 2016, the UWSA changed its stand and announced that it wanted political autonomy for the Wa Self‐Administered Division.