tai

Thai

Thailand

Thailand has been urged to better address the plight of hundreds of thousands of people who have fled persecution from neighbouring countries by providing them with shelter similar to the nine camps for Burmese refugees along the Thai-Burmese border. The call was made by human rights activists speaking at yesterday's launch of the World Refugee Survey 2006 by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).( Tailand )

Myanmar

Imported food safety a program

July 30, 2007—Burma's government has said it cannot ensure all imported food and medicine is safe, amid growing international concerns about the safety of products from its giant neighbor, China.

Burma is flooded with Chinese goods—legally imported and smuggled across a porous border—and traders say many are substandard if not harmful.

But the impoverished country's Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, said it does not have enough resources to control the quality of all imported products, according to a report o­n Sunday in The Myanmar Times, a weekly English-language newspaper.

"The FDA currently has o­nly 100 staff, which is not enough to carry out strict monitoring processes to ensure the safety of the 50 million people," the agency's director, Dr Kyaw Lin, told The Myanmar Times.

Nevertheless the FDA's responsibilities will soon be expanded to include screening cosmetics, consumer goods and medical equipment, the newspaper cited Kyaw Lin as saying.

Burma imported nearly US $1 billion worth of Chinese products in fiscal 2005-2006, while an unknown amount of goods cross the border from its giant northeastern neighbor.

Last week China's Premier Wen Jiabao ordered food and drug safety bodies to make product quality a top priority after a series of scandals involving tainted food and drugs led to the recall or rejection of a slew of Chinese exports around the world.

Chinese officials, initially reluctant to acknowledge the problem, have vowed more stringent surveillance and a crackdown o­n the country's countless small, unregulated producers.

According to Burmese traders, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals from the country's repressive government, Chinese imports to Burma are cheaper but of a lower standard than the products China exports to the US and Europe.

The Myanmar Times said China is the fourth biggest supplier of legal pharmaceuticals to Burma behind India, Indonesia and Bangladesh—but that unregulated drugs also cross the border illegally.

Dr Maung Maung Lay, chairman of the Myanmar Pharmaceuticals and Medical Equipment Entrepreneurs Association, told the weekly that 10 to 15 percent of the pharmaceuticals available in the country are fake or flawed.

But poverty and a lack of awareness of the dangers of substandard or cheap medicine means the people of Burma continue to buy Chinese pharmaceuticals.

"People are not educated enough to differentiate between a cheap drug and an expensive but potent o­ne. Another reason why people go for cheaper medicine is because they are poor," a drug shop owner commented.

26 May 2007
^{Shwe Mann}
Gen Shwe Mann, junta's # 3 man, hospitalized in Singapore because of "dysentery." (Burma Herald/ DVB)

31 May 2007

Month-long Free Suu Kyi campaign ends with pray meetings in Taunggyi and Chauk. (DVB)

29 May 2007
^{Aung San Suu Kyi}
Foreign ministers from Asia and Europe meeting in Hamburg calls on Burma to lift restrictions placed on political parties and release those under detention including Aung San Suu Kyi. It also "encourages" Burma for an inclusive dialogue that will involve all political parties and ethnic groups. (DPA)

Thai-Burma Relations
10-12 May 2007

Thai and junta generals hold Regional Border Committee meeting # 24 in Moulmein. No details disclosed. (New Light of Myanmar/SHAN)

Thu 19 Jul 2007

Myanmar’s military government opened Wednesday what it says will be the final session of a national convention aimed at completing a process launched 14 years ago to draw up guidelines for a new constitution.

Critics call the proceedings a sham because the junta hand-picked most of the delegates and because pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi currently under house arrest cannot attend.

The meeting aims to complete the first stage of what the junta has called a seven-step “road map” to democracy that is supposed to culminate in free elections, although no timetable has been announced.

In his opening speech, Lt. Gen. Thein Sein, the acting prime minister, called the convention the most important part of the road map, and urged delegates not to try to amend points previously agreed to.

“Since this is the last session, delegates are asked to review the principles … without deviating from the already agreed guidelines,” he said.

Thein Sein, also the chairman of the National Convention Convening Commission, said most of the population supports the convention, but that a small “negative-looking group” opposes it.

He warned that legal action will be taken against anyone who tries to derail the process.

The convention, meeting after a seven-month hiatus, could take about a month and a half to complete, Information Minister Brig. Gen. Kyaw Hsan said.

More than 1,000 delegates from across the country gathered at the Nyaung-Hna-Pin convention center, about 25 miles north of the commercial capital Yangon, for the meeting.

Myanmar, formerly called Burma, has been without a constitution since 1988, when the current junta took power and suspended a 1974 charter.

The guidelines set by the national convention are to be used in writing a new constitution, but the junta has not publicly said who will draft the charter.

Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, has boycotted the convention to protest her continued detention and that of other NLD leaders.

The final session is to adopt guidelines for the remaining seven of the constitution’s 15 chapters, and make some changes to previously approved parts.

“The government did not make it clear what changes will be made, but we view this as a positive move,” Han Tha Myint, an NLD spokesman, told The Associated Press on Tuesday, referring to the planned completion of the first stage of the roadmap.

Han Tha said the party has asked the government to amend some of the constitution’s 104 basic principles and six objectives, one of which guarantees a major role for the military in Myanmar’s political future.

Some critics say the finished document is not likely to usher in promised democratic reforms or protect the rights of minority groups. Other critics say the whole process has been a stalling strategy to prolong the junta’s grip on power.

Ethnic minority groups have complained the adopted principles would give the central government greater powers, even though their delegates have demanded equal rights and greater administrative and judicial powers. Many minorities have been seeking greater autonomy for decades.

In all, 17 armed ethnic minority rebel groups have reached cease-fire agreements with the junta since 1989. Some surrendered their arms, but a few kept their weapons to take care of their area’s security.

Most of the groups had asked the government to allow them to keep their armed units as a police or guard force, but the point has not yet been addressed in the charter guidelines.

“We have to wait and see the outcome of the National Convention. We have requested the government to make appropriate arrangements for our soldiers, but the role of our armed group is not yet clear under the new constitution,” said Naing Tin Hla, a member of the New Mon State Party who is attending the convention as an observer.

The junta first convened the convention in 1993, but aborted it in 1996 after NLD delegates walked out saying it was undemocratic and that the military was manipulating the proceedings. The process was resurrected in 2004.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years.

S.S.A news

SSA burns 1.1 million speed pills

The Shan State Army (SSA) South held its third drug bonfire at Loi Kawwan base, opposite Chiangrai at 11:00 this morning.

The ceremony was presided over by Col Yawdserk, the SSA boss, and witnessed by a number of foreign media including The Nation, Bangkok Post and TiTV. The SSA is ready to cooperate with Burma’s military junta in the field of drug suppression, he said, as he put the torch to 1.1 million methamphetamine pills, priced at Baht 38.5 million( $ 1 million) on the Thai-Burma border.

The pills were reportedly seized from the pro-junta militia led by Ja Seu-bo.

^{Image: S.H.A.N.}

Shans/ Shan State
21 May 2007
^{Col Yawdserk}
Delegates from the Burmese junta and the Shan State Army will be meeting on 23 May over a ceasefire plan, says SSA leader Yawdserk. (The Nation)

Shans/ Shan State
18 May 2007

Shan State Army (SSA) says it will be marking the 49th anniversary of Shan Resistance at its Loi Taileng base, opposite Maehongson on Monday, 21 May. (SHAN)

Another exercise in piecing the Burma jigsaw together

At last, I have read it. And I have to congratulate Sao Sanda Simms, the eldest daughter of Prince Sao Shwe Thaike (1896-1962) of Yawnghwe who was the first President of Burma (1948-1952), for giving us such a reading pleasure.


Published and distributed in Thailand by Rivers Books Co.Ltd Price quotes: B500-595

Because memoirs, as we all know, are always livelier and more fascinating than most history books, which tend to be straightforward and dull.

For the first thing, she remembers well despite her age (80 on 20 October 2008). Scenes described during her childhood days especially the annual Phaung Daw U festival on the Inle lake, the thrilling gambling dens with 4 animal games and 36 animal games and her life as an apprentice weaver were vivid and superb.

Inevitably, her account is about Burma and why and how it is languishing in “the present complicated political situation.” And for every topic, she does speak her mind.
Samples:

“I have heard that today some hoteliers and those in the tourism industry are exploiting the ethnic Padaung. It seems totally unacceptable that one’s compatriots could be put into compounds for tourists to gape it.” (P.85)
“Regarding the debate as to whether one should visit Burma,” she says, “my feeling is that is undoubtedly better for tourists to go and to have seen something of the country and its people, rather than not to have been there at all.”(P.277)

It is not any wonder she is also severe in her judgment of both the British, the Shan’s past masters, and the Burman leaders, their present masters:

Blamed by the Burman leaders of their Divide and Rule separation of Shans and other non-Burman peoples from the lowland Burmans, and “any existing animosity between the Burman and the Shan,” “The British however had a long-term plan for the amalgamation of the Shan States and the Frontier Areas, with Burma Proper. Although the British government was conscious that the ethnic nationalities were content to remain within the Dominion, it felt it had to convince them that joining with Burma Proper was in their best interest when independence came.” (P.278)

In its policy statement to Parliament in May 1945, the Secretary of State for Burma also declared that: “The administration of the Scheduled Areas, that is the Shan States and the tribal areas in the mountainous fringes of the country inhabited by peoples differing in language, social customs and degree of political development from the Burmans inhabiting the central areas, would for the time being be subject to a special regime under the Governor until such time as their inhabitants signify their desire for some suitable form of amalgamation of their territories with Burma proper.” (P.158)

Thus even though the Aung San-Atlee Agreement, signed on 27 January 1947, a week before the Panglong Conference, stipulated that inclusion of the frontier peoples depended on the “free consent” of those effected, “it is pretty clear that the British was not prepared to take no for an answer from the frontier areas,” she says quoting F.S.V. Donnison, who wrote Burma (1970).

Indeed, though the post-war Labor Government sent a Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry (FACE), led by D.R.Rees-Williams, to feel out the hill peoples, as non-Burman ethnic nationalities were known in those days, “the whole issue had been prejudged under the Attlee-Aung San Agreement,” according to Hugh Tinker.

This was in spite of the fact that many knowledgeable Burma hands like HNC Stevenson were convinced that the country was not yet ready for independence. Burma was made up of diverse communities with different interests and with differing degrees of political development. “However, despite being aware of the disparity between the different groups, it appears that the British did little to seriously resolve this problem,” she says. (P.42) With regards to the Aung San-Attlee Agreement and the overall discussion on the granting of independence, she remarks that “the British had only made a half-hearted attempt to accommodate the demands of the ethnic nationalities within the future framework of the Union of Burma, with no safeguards provided.” (P.238)

The heart of the matter was that the Attlee Government was also in a hurry to dismantle the British Empire where the sun had never set. Which paved the way for today’s chaos. “I remember many old British Burma hands saying that ‘Burma had been given a raw deal,’” she writes.

She ends her memoirs with a quotation form her late younger brother Chao Tzang Yawnghwe (1939-2004), “The time has come for Burma’s leaders, both in Rangoon and jungle headquarters to re-think seriously and practically their ambitions, and prejudices. For much too long, the people of the Union of Burma have been entrapped in a politics of violence. All efforts must be undertaken to break the vicious cycle which has made the Burman(or Burmese), Shan, Mon, Karen, Karenni, Kachin, Chin and Arakanese, pitiable victims of war and violence.” (P.279)

All in all, a thought-provoking book. After all, nobody lives forever. So why the big fuss about nothings like becoming top dogs, and to Burmanize (or even Shanize) and subdue other peoples.

Tai New Year:

Tai New Year:

How, Not If We Have It

Introduction

Tai is a big family in the Mongoloid race consisting of “four major geographical groups associated with six rivers” [1]: the Chao Phraya, the Mekong, Salween and the Black and Red rivers in Vietnam and Brhamaputra River in India. Around 80 million people in Asia speak some variation of the Tai language.

Today Tais, mainly the Tais of Shan State, celebrate 2096th New Year with religious and social significance. How and when did the Tai lunar year begin is a question increasingly asked among the Tais as we attempt to find the root of our culture to justify our place in modern world. It is this important question that this short paper intends to take as a point to begin with in our inevitably long search of cultural history.

Mythical Nature of Calendar

Before embarking on what is largely theoretical propositions, I may call your attention to the nature of controversy around most of the calendars in the world. Myths and novelty are often associated with the beginning of a calendar. Look at the Buddhist, Christ and Burmese calendar, to take some familiar ones as examples. The Buddhist calendar began by the death of the historical Buddha, Gotama. There is a disagreement between southern and northern Buddhists as to the exact date of his mahaparinibbana (demise), although western scholars believe it to be 486 BC or even 386 BC[2]. Nonetheless, they all agree roughly that the Buddhist era if commenced by the death of the Buddha, probably started in the 5th BC. The Christian year is supposed to have started the year Jesus was born. The anno domini, AD, or the year of Our Lord is a confused one as most scholars now agree that Jesus was actually born much later than that date. What more! when the Eastern Orthodox Christians, the Russians and Greeks celebrate Christmas, the Birthday of Jesus in February in stead of 25th December. The Burmese believe their year, adopted from Sakra-year of the northern Indian tradition, started from the grandfather of the Lord Buddha, Anchana. The beginning of the Sakra and the modification of the Burmese era during the Pagan period bear almost no relationship from ethnologically. This and the incompatibility of Burmese culture with the adopted Sakra year were some of the reasons that Bodawpaya (1778-1819) attempted to create a pure Burmese calendar called Pondaw calendar. Due to strong opposition from the monastic Order, Bodawpaya gave it up after a few years. The Pondaw has been studied in recent years by Dr. Yin Yin and Dr. Than Tun.[3] Despite myths often associated with calendars it is clear that calendar has been in use at least during the time of the Buddha as witnessed in some Buddhist scriptures.

How, Not If

My arguments in the following paragraphs will be that Tais have had and in deed used their own calendar as early as the first century BC. While the circumstances surrounding the of Tai calendar will still remain obscure at the end of arguments, I expect at the end of my arguments the question among us to clearly shift from if we had a lunar calendar of our own to what were the socio-political and cultural milieu in which the Tai lunar calendar emerged.

Since the end of the World War II, some scholarly attention has been given to study of social organisation of Tais: Hansheng Chon’s academic enquiry on the issue culminating in his work “Frontier land Systems in Southernmost China: A Comparative Study of Agrarian problems and Social organisation among Pai Yi (Tai) people of Yunnan and the Kamba people of Sikang” (Institute of pacific Studies, New York, 1949), P. Gogai’s The Tai and The Tai Kingdoms”, Gauhati University, 1969, a collective work of scholars at the Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra entitled “Tai Studies in Honour of William J. Gedney, T. W. Gelling and Nguyen Dan Liem, 1979, Lu-fan Chen’s “When Came the Tai Race?”, Taiwan, 1990 are some of the well known works we take pride in mentioning them here.
The Shan State is a high plateau with an elevation of 5,000-6,000 feet above sea level. It is covered with dense evergreen forests, pine, streams, rivers and waterfalls making the country a natural and beautiful land. It lies at an average of 3,000 to 4,000 feet above sea level and the highest point is Mount Loilaeng (8,777 ft ) in Mong Yai, Loi Parng Nao (8,408 ft ) in Kentung, Loi tzang (8,129 ft) in Mong Kung township.

The Salween ( Nam Khong in Shan) River is the principal river of the Shan State. It has its source in the Tibetan Himalayas and flows southwards through China and enters the Shan State, dividing it into two parts, then passes the Karenni state, Karen State and Mon State finally joining the Indian Ocean at the Gulf of Martaban near the town of Moulmein. Many tributaries of the Salween, such as the Nam Taeng, Nam Parng and Nam Nim all enter the Salween near the Town of Kun Hing (Kun Haeng: thousand islets) where many islets by the hundreds are formed. In the east there are the Nam Ma, Nam Kha and Nam Sim which flow into the Salween. The Mekong ( Nam Khawng in Shan) serves as the boundary between Laos and the Shan State for a length of 120 miles, then flows through Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam into the Gulf of Thailand.

Three factors will cited here to support our proposition that Tais might have used their own calendar in their heydays: the first relates to the fact that the Tais were seen by the Chinese as a threat long before the birth of Christ and century-long wars between the two consequently ensued. An early book of Chinese history recorded the Tais, Bai Yues (Pai Yi), as people with different surnames dispersed over vast areas from Jiao Zhi (Hanoi region, Vietnam) to Hui Ji (Shao Xin, Zheing Province, China). In fact, as early as Han dynasty, the forerunners of the Tais (Dais) were already noted in Chinese records (206 BC) under the name of Dian Yue, who lived over large areas in the south and west of Yunnan. This fact indicates how highly Tai socio-cultural organization might have been so as to merit rivalry of the now one of the most powerful cultures. (Another rival of the Chinese, the Tibetans, seen by Beijing for centuries up to the present as culturally too strong to be assimilated, had also developed culturally long before Buddhism arrived in their homeland in the 7 AD. Indeed, Buddhism had had to make enormous comprise with the existing culture in order to take root in Tibet.) While easy access to India and the hostile geographical conditions may have saved the Tibetans until relatively a recent time, the Tais who developed culture of farming and agriculture so successfully in the plain might have become a reason for the Chinese to consider us as their immediate foes.

Second, evidence to our hypothesis comes from the Tais of Ahom who founded a Tai kingdom in Assam since 13th century and ruled continuously for six hundred years (1228-1826 AD[4]). Tai Ahoms posses a diverse range of literature, including one on Buddhism. One of the most famous Buddhist works is “Phra-tra-along” still held in veneration by the Tai Ahoms today[5]. This work is of great interest to Buddhologists as much as is to historians. For despite the profession of Theravada Buddhism by Tais in almost all parts of Southeast Asia and India, this work is considered to belong to Mahayana school of Buddhism. In Tai language those days as in today, “phra” means the Buddha, “tra” is his teaching and “along” denotes bodhisatta, the aspirant of buddhahood. The work in question effectively deals the Triple Gem, but instead of the sangha as in the Theravada, it is the bodhisatta, the Buddha-would-be, that forms the third component here. It is important here to distinguish between the early Tai Ahoms and the later arrivals, Tai Khamtis who went to Assam in the 18th century when the early Kong-Baung Kings of Burma invaded Assam and Manipur. Equally imperative here is to note that until Swargadeva Susengpha (Hsosengpha) or Burha raja or Pratap Singh (1603-1641 AD), the Tai king who converted to Hinduism, Assam had no contact with Burmese culture. It is therefore possible to state that Tais did not use Sakra that the Burmese adopted as their lunar calendar, not before the Kong-Baung period when some of the Tai Saophas did receive some royal orders from the Burmese court at Ava and Amarapura. So, what calendar then did the Tai courts use is the right question that should imply here.

The third and last indication that Tais had used their own calendar is that Tais were still using their own calculation of months by the end of 18th century when Bodaypaya attempting to create Pondaw calendar. Sao Garng Hso, one of our greatest Pandits made all his predictions about the future of Shan States, for which he was exiled to Chiangsen, based on a sixty-days month of Tai lunar system. The book is called “ Pay-tarng Sao Garng Hso” but the way to calculate is shown in his work entitled “Jatisaranyan”. Most of the Tai calendars published inside Shan State have these sixty days in them. The sixty days are calculated from ten mother-years, “mea-pi” and 12 son-years, “look-pi”. Based on this calculation that we know when the new year day falls. Loong Sarng Sam from Mongkeng is the best living scholar of this subject at the moment. According to this calculation the New Year day falls on 16th December this year, although when fallowed Burmese lunar months, it was on 30th November (Lern Zieng mai won nurng). The Thai used this calendar before cahnging to Sakra year and then Buddhist era.

Conclusion

We can thus suggest that Tais had used their own calendar before changing Sakra under the influence of Indian culture that swept through Southeast Asia as late as 10th century. The late Loong Khun Maha of Mongai and Sai Fa are of the opinion that the Tai calendar might have started when Mong Loong and Mong Pa were flourishing as the capitals of Tais. The exact circumstances though still require substantial research to be discovered. We may be closer to unearthing our lost cultural history if we first discover how we lost our surnames, for they were still in use when the Chinese recorded us as Dien Yue.

For now, signs of New Year are largely found in our vocabulary of months and in activities of harvest season. Lurn Zieng means the month of beginning. Zieng is a classical Tai word to describe a beginning or the birth of something; when a baby learns how to walk, his mother would repeat zieng, zieng, zieng, because the word signifies not only the beginning but also being auspicious. A local leader in Khaisim village, Nampong, Lashio told me that lurn zieng was the first month Brhama created. Loong Zaray Wiling clearly drew his authority for his interpretation from Purusha Sukta of Upnishadic literature of Hinduism. It is doubtful if Tais of other parts of the world would interpret in the same way. The second month, lurn gam is the month of religious devotion; gam literary means to abstain (from bad activities and also from normal routine). a new mother takes a month staying indoor after giving a birth to a baby. It is possible that in ancient days the Tais did not work in the second month, perhaps due to extreme cold weather or they took a month (four weeks) of annual holidays after harvesting their crop.

Since Zieng is closely associated with harvesting, one of the essential features of celebrating Tai New Year is to gin zieng, a ritual party where people get together and feed each other. Since our system places importance on months due to our calculation of the movement of the earth around the moon, not around the sun, Tai word “lurn” means both month and moon. In other word, Tai calendar is not a solar one.

Well, I have promised at the beginning that at the end of my arguments one will remain as uninformed as he was concerning the circumstances in which Tai lunar year began. Nevertheless, I am confident that you have now shifted your quest from an earlier position of if Tais really had lunar year to how we Tais began it and how we have gone through it all.

Mai Soong Pi Mai Tai 2096th.