A soldier talks to one of the 131 job seekers from Myanmar who were caught after illegally crossing the border in Sai Yok district of Kanchanaburi on Saturday morning. (Photo supplied: Piyarat Chongcharoen)
KANCHANABURI: A total of 131 illegal migrants from Myanmar were caught near the border in Sai Yok district on Saturday morning while waiting for transport to take them to workplaces.
A patrol of soldiers from the Lat Ya Task Force, local police and officials found a large group of people hiding in a forested area in Ban Thung Chang village of tambon Sri Mongkhol at around 6am.
The group comprised 72 men and 59 women, all Myanmar nationals. Health workers were sent to check their temperatures and all were normal.
The detainees told officials that they had travelled from Dawei, Yangon, Mawlamyine, Bago and other Myanmar townships to work in Thailand. They walked along natural trails at night to enter Thai territory before hiding in the forest to await transport to other provinces.
They said they were destined for jobs in Bangkok, Samut Sakhon, Kanchanaburi, Chon Buri and Prachin Buri. They were to pay between 17,000 and 20,000 baht each to job brokers upon arriving at their destinations.
All of them were handed over to Sai Yok police to be charged with illegal entry and deported.
The number of migrants crossing into Thailand from Myanmar has been rising steadily in recent weeks as the economy in their home country deteriorates, nine months after a military coup. On Thursday, 101 job seekers from Myanmar were caught after they crossed the border into Sai Yok district.
Singapore’s foreign ministry said on Saturday the move to exclude junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was a “difficult, but necessary, decision to uphold ASEAN’s credibility” | AP/file
Singapore’s foreign ministry said on Saturday the move to exclude junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was a “difficult, but necessary, decision to uphold ASEAN’s credibility”.
Southeast Asian countries will invite a non-political representative from Myanmar to a regional summit this month, delivering an unprecedented snub to the military leader who led a coup against an elected civilian government in February.
The decision taken by foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at an emergency meeting on Friday night, marks a rare bold step for the consensus-driven bloc, which has traditionally favoured a policy of engagement and non-interference.
Singapore’s foreign ministry said on Saturday the move to exclude junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was a “difficult, but necessary, decision to uphold ASEAN’s credibility”.
The statement cited a lack of progress made on a roadmap to restore peace in Myanmar that the junta had agreed to with ASEAN in April.
A spokesman for Myanmar’s military government blamed “foreign intervention” for the decision.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told the BBC Burmese news service that the United States and representatives of the European Union had pressured other ASEAN member states.
“The foreign interventions can also be seen here,” he said. “We learned that some envoys from some countries met with U.S. foreign affairs and received pressure from EU.”
More than 1,000 civilians have been killed by Myanmar security forces with thousands of others arrested, according to the United Nations, amid a crackdown on strikes and protests which has derailed the country’s tentative democracy and prompted international condemnation. The junta says those estimates of the death toll are exaggerated.
ASEAN’s current chair Brunei said a non-political figure from Myanmar would be invited to the Oct. 26-28 summit, after no consensus was reached for a political representative to attend.
“As there had been insufficient progress… as well as concerns over Myanmar’s commitment, in particular on establishing constructive dialogue among all concerned parties, some ASEAN Member States recommended that ASEAN give space to Myanmar to restore its internal affairs and return to normalcy,” Brunei said in a statement.
It did not mention Min Aung Hlaing or name who would be invited in his stead.
Brunei said some member states had received requests from Myanmar’s National Unity Government, formed by opponents of the junta, to attend the summit.
‘Justified Downgrade’
ASEAN has faced increasing international pressure to take a tougher stand against Myanmar, having been criticised in the past for its ineffectiveness in dealing with leaders accused of rights abuses, subverting democracy and intimidating political opponents.
A US State Department official told reporters on Friday that it was “perfectly appropriate and in fact completely justified” for ASEAN to downgrade Myanmar’s participation at the coming summit.
Singapore in its statement urged Myanmar to cooperate with ASEAN’s envoy, Brunei’s second foreign affairs minister Erywan Yusof.
Erywan has delayed a long-planned visit to the country in recent weeks and has asked to meet all parties in Myanmar, including deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained in the coup.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said this week Erywan would be welcome in Myanmar, but would not be allowed to meet Suu Kyi because she is charged with crimes.
Malaysia’s foreign minister said it would be up to the Myanmar junta to decide on an alternate representative to the summit.
“We never thought of removing Myanmar from ASEAN, we believe Myanmar has the same rights (as us),” foreign minister Saifuddin Abdullah told reporters according to Bernama state news agency.
“But the junta has not cooperated, so ASEAN must be strong in defending its credibility and integrity,” he added.
A demonstrator observes a moment of silence during a protest outside the United Nations Building in Bangkok. (Photographer: Andre Malerba/Bloomber
(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. appealed part of a Washington judge’s order to turn over internal documents related to accounts that helped incite genocidal violence against the Muslim minority in Myanmar. The company is challenging U.S. Magistrate Zia Faruqi’s September directive to release content from government-backed accounts that helped spark violence against the Rohingya Muslims, as well as related documents from an internal investigation into the platform’s role in instigating the Rohingya.
Facebook said in a court filing late Wednesday that it’s willing to work with Gambia “to produce tens of millions to hundreds of millions of pages of relevant public information and non-content metadata to help” the case against Myanmar. But the company argued that Faruqi went too far in ordering the broad release of non-public information, including records from Facebook’s internal probe, in light of a federal law protecting the privacy and free-speech rights of internet users.
In his ruling, Faruqi found that most of Gambia’s request was permissible under the Stored Communications Act, the law Facebook invoked. “Locking away the requested content would be throwing away the opportunity to understand how disinformation begat genocide of the Rohingya,” Faruqi wrote.
Facebook argued Wednesday that Faruqi’s “sweeping and unprecedented ruling is inconsistent with the text and purpose” of the privacy law and would have “severe unintended consequences that go far beyond the facts of this matter.”
In a statement, Rafael Frankel, Facebook’s director of south and southeast Asia policy, said the company had already made voluntary disclosures to investigators and plans to share more information with Gambia. “We support international efforts to bring accountability for atrocity crimes committed against the Rohingya people,” Frankel said.
The role of Facebook in the genocide in Myanmar is well established. A 2018 report commissioned by Facebook found that the platform was used to incite violence against the Rohingya. That August, Facebook banned 20 organizations and individuals in Myanmar, including a military commander. In a statement accompanying the report, a Facebook executive said, “We can and should do more.”
The Norwegian telecoms firm is awaiting regulatory approval for the sale of its Myanmar operation.
Myanmar’s military junta confirmed that it asked executives from the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor not to leave the country, pending the authorities’ approval of the company’s deal to sell its operation in the country.
In an interview with Reuters published yesterday, Aung Naing Oo, the military-appointed investment minister, said that the military administration wanted “to have discussions physically with some of the Telenor management.” He admitted, “It’s kind of a request not to leave the country.”
Aung Naing Oo’s comment confirms the claim, also reported by Reuters in July, that senior telecoms executives had been barred from leaving the country. The news agency reported at the time that Myanmar’s Department of Posts and Telecommunications had issued a confidential order in mid-June stating that senior executives of telecoms firms, both foreigners and Myanmar nationals, must seek special authorization in order to leave the country.
In his interview with Reuters this week, Aung Naing Oo said that the move only applied to Telenor, “not to foreign telecoms officials from all foreign telecom companies.” He said the restriction was in place because the junta “want to have discussions physically with some of the management in Telenor.”
In July, the Norwegian firm, announced the sale of its mobile operations in Myanmar to M1 Group, a Lebanese company, for the knockdown price of $105 million, two months after booking a loss of nearly $800 million on its investment. The company stated that “further deterioration of the situation and recent developments in Myanmar form the basis for the decision to divest the company.”
In addition to the severe deterioration in the business environment that followed the coup, the sale may also have been motivated by the junta’s attempts to force Telenor, along with the country’s other three telecoms firms, to implement special intercept technology in order to permit the authorities to spy on calls, messages, and web traffic.
Telenor reportedly resisted the requests to install the technology. In its May statement announcing that it was fully impairing its Myanmar operations, the company called on the military administration “to immediately reinstate unimpeded communications and respect the right to freedom of expression and human rights.”
The departure of Telenor, whose entry to the Myanmar market in 2014 symbolized the optimism of the political and economic opening then underway, points to the increasingly severe and challenging operating environment facing foreign firms.ADVERTISEMENT
The confirmation from Aung Naing Oo also comes amid similar reports that the military junta has begun to impose broader restrictions on departures from the country. According to a report yesterday by Coconuts Yangon, Myanmar citizens are being turned away from Yangon’s airport in order to prevent them from leaving the country. Citing travelers and tourist agencies, it reported that 17 travelers were blocked from embarking on flights at the airport last weekend. It cited an airport employee as stating that new restrictions have been put in place to prevent people from leaving the country.
For what exact reason one can only guess. But with Myanmar junta’s coming under increasing international censure, foreign nationals and capital slowly draining out of the country, and the popular resistance to the junta spreading, the country’s cloistered military rulers seem set on battening down the hatches, and returning the country to its close-woven cocoon of isolation.
Anti-coup protesters march before a crackdown by riot police on Feb. 27 in Yangon, Myanmar. Hkun Lat/Getty Images
“No, I can’t get much time for my idols. … I have to invest my life in the revolution,” said Kelvin, a 19-year-old democratic activist in Myanmar. (Like others in this piece, he is being referred to here by a pseudonym for his safety.) The erstwhile K-pop superfan first learned strategies for social media organizing and amplification via tireless campaigns to get his idols to trend on Twitter.
Now, he devotes all of his time—and digital coordination and influence skills—to fighting online for free speech and democracy in his home country. He and fellow activists live in constant fear of being kidnapped in the middle of the night by the military junta, but they continue to organize tens of thousands of people to spread awareness about ongoing injustices across Myanmar.
This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.
“No, I can’t get much time for my idols. … I have to invest my life in the revolution,” said Kelvin, a 19-year-old democratic activist in Myanmar. (Like others in this piece, he is being referred to here by a pseudonym for his safety.) The erstwhile K-pop superfan first learned strategies for social media organizing and amplification via tireless campaigns to get his idols to trend on Twitter.
Now, he devotes all of his time—and digital coordination and influence skills—to fighting online for free speech and democracy in his home country. He and fellow activists live in constant fear of being kidnapped in the middle of the night by the military junta, but they continue to organize tens of thousands of people to spread awareness about ongoing injustices across Myanmar.
Three characteristics define Kelvin and his fellows. First, they are young. Kelvin and the other administrators of their widely popular social media group, which has a significant presence across Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook, range in age from 17 to 21. Second, they heavily rely on encrypted messaging apps like Telegram for coordination purposes because they consider them more secure—free from the prying eyes of the junta. Finally, and perhaps most uniquely, they are all K-pop stans who have temporarily hung up their fan hats to fight for democratic revolution.
Encrypted messaging apps, particularly Telegram, are currently top of mind for researchers and journalists concerned about disinformation. Telegram had already made a reputation for providing an alternative for extremists chased off more mainstream platforms such as Twitter over the course of 2016–17. Since 2018, Europol has been cracking down massively on ISIS on Telegram. But however, law enforcement officials admit that new groups of various extreme ideologies pop up regularly on the platform. For instance, it captured headlines following the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Mis- and disinformation on encrypted messaging apps have become particularly dangerous in the global COVID-19 pandemic. In response, WhatsApp, for example, has intervened by limiting message forwarding and notifying users when they’ve received viral messages, though it’s unclear whether this truly limits the spread of disinformation, even if it slows it down. Research does suggest, however, that flagging content as potentially misleading or wrong can deter people from spreading the content further.
But activists in authoritarian countries utilize these platforms to organize in a clandestine manner. Many well-intentioned proposals to limit these apps’ usefulness to extremists and disinformation merchants could also hurt this activism. In our ongoing research, we found that formerly (self-described) apolitical influencers in Myanmar have turned activists and are now leveraging encrypted messaging apps to organize opponents of the military junta but also to find and share legitimate news. Crucially, they bring the tech knowledge they built as fans to bear on a whole new set of issues—and the influence strategies often involve actions a company like Facebook might flag as inauthentic coordinated behavior. In the fight against the global spread of propaganda and disinformation, it is critical to remember there are many places in the world where social media—and particularly encrypted messaging apps and other closed communication services—continue to allow democratic activists and others to organize more safely and securely. The strategies of Myanmar K-pop activists mirror digital information manipulation efforts, which reveals something important: The people who are using these tools, and the ends toward which they use them, matter very much.
This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.
“No, I can’t get much time for my idols. … I have to invest my life in the revolution,” said Kelvin, a 19-year-old democratic activist in Myanmar. (Like others in this piece, he is being referred to here by a pseudonym for his safety.) The erstwhile K-pop superfan first learned strategies for social media organizing and amplification via tireless campaigns to get his idols to trend on Twitter.
Now, he devotes all of his time—and digital coordination and influence skills—to fighting online for free speech and democracy in his home country. He and fellow activists live in constant fear of being kidnapped in the middle of the night by the military junta, but they continue to organize tens of thousands of people to spread awareness about ongoing injustices across Myanmar.
Three characteristics define Kelvin and his fellows. First, they are young. Kelvin and the other administrators of their widely popular social media group, which has a significant presence across Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook, range in age from 17 to 21. Second, they heavily rely on encrypted messaging apps like Telegram for coordination purposes because they consider them more secure—free from the prying eyes of the junta. Finally, and perhaps most uniquely, they are all K-pop stans who have temporarily hung up their fan hats to fight for democratic revolution.
Encrypted messaging apps, particularly Telegram, are currently top of mind for researchers and journalists concerned about disinformation. Telegram had already made a reputation for providing an alternative for extremists chased off more mainstream platforms such as Twitter over the course of 2016–17. Since 2018, Europol has been cracking down massively on ISIS on Telegram. But however, law enforcement officials admit that new groups of various extreme ideologies pop up regularly on the platform. For instance, it captured headlines following the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Mis- and disinformation on encrypted messaging apps have become particularly dangerous in the global COVID-19 pandemic. In response, WhatsApp, for example, has intervened by limiting message forwarding and notifying users when they’ve received viral messages, though it’s unclear whether this truly limits the spread of disinformation, even if it slows it down. Research does suggest, however, that flagging content as potentially misleading or wrong can deter people from spreading the content further. Encrypted spaces like Telegram and Signal can provide a home for those on the margins.
But activists in authoritarian countries utilize these platforms to organize in a clandestine manner. Many well-intentioned proposals to limit these apps’ usefulness to extremists and disinformation merchants could also hurt this activism. In our ongoing research, we found that formerly (self-described) apolitical influencers in Myanmar have turned activists and are now leveraging encrypted messaging apps to organize opponents of the military junta but also to find and share legitimate news. Crucially, they bring the tech knowledge they built as fans to bear on a whole new set of issues—and the influence strategies often involve actions a company like Facebook might flag as inauthentic coordinated behavior. In the fight against the global spread of propaganda and disinformation, it is critical to remember there are many places in the world where social media—and particularly encrypted messaging apps and other closed communication services—continue to allow democratic activists and others to organize more safely and securely. The strategies of Myanmar K-pop activists mirror digital information manipulation efforts, which reveals something important: The people who are using these tools, and the ends toward which they use them, matter very much.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been ruled almost exclusively by the military since British colonizers left the Southeast Asian country in the late 1930s. From 2015–2021, it had a civilian government, headed by internationally renowned figure Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet this interim period of fledgling democracy failed to last. Free speech in the country continues to be basically inexistent. The online information environment is highly polluted with disinformation and trolling from the suppressive military regime. Meanwhile, sporadic internet shutdowns further corrode the already limited amounts of information.
Because of these things, skilled digital organizers like Kelvin—with their knowledge of anonymity as well as their cross-platform information gathering and amplification abilities—are instrumental in fighting for democracy in the country.
Due to the legacy of Free Basics in Myanmar, an internet initiative that provided users with free (limited) internet in exchange for creating a Facebook account, Facebook still dominates internet use in Myanmar—but that doesn’t make it safe. Moreover, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are now all blocked in Myanmar, so citizens have to hide their IP addresses using virtual private networks in order to use them. “Our administrators organize on Facebook and Telegram,” Kelvin told us. “Telegram is safer for us, so most of the time we always discuss hashtags and taglines on Telegram.” Telegram, meanwhile, does not require a VPN. Bethany said, “I don’t bring my phone when I go out. ’Cause if they check Facebook Messenger, I would be sentenced for life.”
For Kelvin’s group, organizing is multifaceted and multiplatform. He and his collaborators share clear guidelines for their followers on how to use Twitter effectively (including changing location and using a VPN). They create specific hashtags to use in “mass trending parties,” in which they all message at once to make important information trend, and coordinate times for these events. Some Burmese activists do not feel safe using Facebook at all. Bethany said she uses Telegram because she is able to delete messages on her end and the recipient’s end as well, and only uses Facebook with a fake name. Telegram features afford her more safety and security than anything available on Facebook.
BY: ZELLY MARTIN, KATLYN GLOVER, AND CLAIRE COBURN Credit: slate.com
Feature: Family photo of Myanmar junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing
Myanmar’s parallel National Unity Government (NUG) has urged the public to refuse to work for businesses run by the family of coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
The NUG’s Ministry of Commerce declared in an October 18 statement that 15 companies owned by the junta chief’s family should be boycotted as they are supporting violence against civilians.
Anyone who doesn’t abide by the NUG’s statement risks being listed as a collaborator with the military regime, as Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing is benefiting personally from the companies.
Citing an investigation by the NUG’s Economic Intelligence Unit, Daw Khin Ma Ma Myo, the NUG’s Minister of Commerce, said that “Min Aung Hlaing, the perpetrator of the state rebellion and war crimes, is abusing the military’s power and running many businesses for the benefit of his family.”
His family’s companies include medical supplies, hospitals, construction, hotels, transportation, film production and entertainment, insurance, telecommunications, an art gallery, restaurants and a gym, according to the Ministry of Commerce’s statement.
The Myanmar military also owns two conglomerates – Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited and Myanmar Economic Corporation – which operate in almost all sectors of the economy.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing (middle, front row) attends the opening of the Kan Thar Yar Hospital, in which his family has shares, in December 2017. / Senior General Min Aung Hlaing website
Daw Khin Ma Ma Myo told The Irrawaddy that people supporting the pro-democracy movement are already boycotting military-affiliated businesses. However, some people are still working with military-backed companies, which allows the junta to raise funds to continue their lethal crackdowns on civilians.
“We have to uproot the culture of having military-owned businesses and companies owned by military leaders’ families,” she said.
“If you don’t want to be on the list of people supporting violence, this is the time to retreat. We urge the public to refuse to use the services these companies provide and not to act as proxy directors or owners or allow their names to be used to register military-backed companies,” added Daw Khin Ma Ma Myo.
The NUG said that people who did collaborate with the businesses, whether as partners, directors, board members, shareholders, staff and legal advisers, risked being punished by the law.
“Action will be taken in accordance with international law and procedures,” the NUG said in its statement.
Of the 15 businesses listed by the NUG, the Mytel Group Company, part-owned by the military, and the Seventh Sense entertainment company, led by the coup leader’s daughter, were listed as ‘suspended’ when their status was checked October 19 on the Directorate of Investment and Company Registration (DICA) website. Information on some of the other companies listed by the NUG was also unavailable on the DICA website, the source of company information under the ousted National League for Democracy government.
The list of companies affiliated to Snr. Gnr. Min Aung Hlaing and his family, as issued by the NUG, is as follows.
A & M Mahar Foods and Medical Products Company
Sky One Construction Company
The Yangon Restaurant, Yangon Gallery for art exhibitions
Everfit Company Limited, gym and fitness in Yangon
Seventh Sense Company Limited, film production and entertainment
Stellar Seven Entertainment Company (Limited)
Azura Beach Resort in Chaung Tha, Ayeyarwady Region
People sit on the ground while waiting for hours to withdraw cash from ATMs at the CB Bank branch at Myanmar Plaza in Yangon, Myanmar, May 11, 2021. Credit: AP Photo
The February coup has rapidly unwound a decade of economic progress, while foreign investors are headed for the exits.
The precipitous collapse of the Myanmar kyat, which has lost more than 60 percent of its value in recent weeks, is the latest sign of the plight facing the country’s economy, which has already been pushed to the verge of total collapse. High inflation, rising food prices, and an acute cash shortage have plunged the population into economic desperation. The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank estimate that Myanmar’s GDP shrank by 18 percent in the fiscal year to September 30, the worst in Myanmar’s recent history.
Eight months after the February coup, an increasing number of foreign businesses have now jumped ship. The latest example is the closure of the $45 million Kempinski Hotel in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw, which hosted President Barack Obama during his state visit in 2014. The Geneva-headquartered international luxury hotel chain revealed this month that the flagship hotel would cease operations starting October 13.
Also this month, British American Tobacco announced that it would leave the Myanmar market at the end of 2021, with business sources in Yangon attributing its departure to commercial decisions. Having begun operating in the country in 2013, with a $50 million investment, BAT’s exit from Myanmar after less than a decade reflects the extent to which the business environment has deteriorated in just a few months.
The junta has continued its bloody crackdown against civilians all over the country as the generals have yet to consolidate their grip. Fighting continues to surge in the heartlands and the border regions, including Chin State – a hotbed of anti-military resistance – where the junta has reportedly imposed internet blackouts across large portions of the state.
“Many companies came into Myanmar not for the immediate return but for the fact that there was a brighter future ahead of them… but now that’s gone,” said a Japanese investor, who came into the country in 2015, lured by the prospect of profiting from Asia’s “last frontier market.”
“Big problems keep popping up every few months and it’s really devastating for business. It’s very difficult to plan in such an unstable environment,” the investor added. “We were quite confident in making investments in Myanmar in the past but now with such uncertainty it’s bringing too high [of a] risk to make investments.”
In the economic powerhouse Yangon, the regime has sought to create a façade of normality by inviting foreign business groups for an in-person meeting. On September 24, the military-appointed Minister of Investment Aung Naing Oo chaired a meeting organized by the disgraced national business lobby, the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI). The Diplomat confirmed this confidential meeting with an internal memo from a major Asian business group as well as multiple diplomatic and business sources briefed on the matter.
Despite initial pushback from the foreign and local business community against the junta, the generals could find comfort that some foreign business groups said nothing about the crisis and had no problem meeting and greeting a minister appointed by the military.ADVERTISEMENT
AustCham Myanmar, China Enterprises Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar (CECCM), the Myanmar-Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MHKCCI), the India-Myanmar Chamber of Commerce (IMCC), the Thai Business Association of Myanmar, the Korea Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar (KoCham), and Israeli and Malaysian business groups joined the meeting, multiple sources confirmed to The Diplomat. In contrast, business groups from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and European countries did not attend.
In a rare break from the usual practice, Myanmar state media did not disclose this particular meeting, a move that indicates that the State Administration Council (SAC) is aware of the potential huge backlash facing the attendees. There is also little transparency from these chambers to their members and public about their policy of engagement and their justifications for it.
Business sources in Yangon pointed out that among the attendees, AustCham Myanmar is the only entity that had spoken out against the regime earlier. For the rest, critics say their silence over the coup and ensuing crisis, while quietly meeting with the junta, amounts to active support of the military authorities.
AustCham chair Chris Hughes said the business organization has been “very clear” about its position and that its “statements on the political situation have been more direct and concrete than most other chambers.”
“Our views haven’t changed and we decided that it would be appropriate to make these same comments at this regular meeting of foreign chambers that the UMFCCI organizes, and that was attended by the relevant Minister, so that these influential parties knew where we stood and could see that we were sincere about working for change,” he said.
“We certainly weren’t signaling that the political and business situation was acceptable and that we were back to business as usual, and no one present was in any doubt about where we stood,” he added.
The presence of KoCham at the September 24 meeting was a particular source of embarrassment for the South Korean government, which last month became the first foreign government to allow the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) to set up an official representative office abroad. While KoCham representative Jerry Kim told The Diplomat it did not consult the embassy over the decision to attend the meeting, the issue is bound to taint the tenure of outgoing South Korean Ambassador Lee Sang-hwa, who didn’t respond to a request for comment and who is known to be reluctant to engage with journalists since the coup.
But other chambers have more explicit government connections: The CECCM is chaired by senior state-owned Bank of China representative Liu Ying while the Hong Kong Trade Development Council’s official Shirley Ng is MHKCCI’s secretary-general. These chambers as well as Indian, Israeli, Malaysian, and Thai business groups, have either not responded to the Diplomat’s request for comments or declined to comment.
The September 24 meeting has drawn the ire of Myanmar activists and protesters.
“Foreign chambers joining this meet-and-greet with the military junta are effectively legitimizing an unlawful, terrorist entity. The military junta is courting business in an attempt to entrench rule and increase revenue to finance its campaign of terror,” said Yadanar Maung, spokesperson for the activist group Justice for Myanmar. “Foreign chambers must stand for human rights and responsible business, but these chambers engaging with SAC are doing the opposite. This also reflects a failure of the government policies of the respective chambers, none of which have imposed targeted sanctions since the military’s illegal coup.”ADVERTISEMENT
She branded it “deplorable” for the Australian, Chinese, Hong Kong, South Korean, Indian, and Thai chambers to “have members with enduring business ties to the Myanmar military and its conglomerates, who have ignored the findings of the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission and stand complicit in the military’s crimes.”
“For instance, IMCC chairman Sunil Seth is an Adani Ports executive, responsible for paying military conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation $90 million to lease land for a port, while the Myanmar-Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce and Industry includes board members from VPower and Shangri-La, which hold respective land leases with MEHL and the Myanmar army,” Maung told The Diplomat.
“Meeting with the SAC – even if it is for a ‘meet-and-greet’ – will be seen as a political act, and that comes with significant risks,” said Jared Bissinger, a development economist and independent consultant specializing in Myanmar. “Could Myanmar consumers promote a boycott against companies that met with the SAC? How will foreign buyers react? Businesses and business organizations should probably spend their time on better things than networking with the military government.”
Rights groups have criticized the move as an affront to human rights, with some warning of a public backlash. Some of the companies who lead these chambers are regional firms, such as law firm VDB Loi and Siam Cement Group.
“It’s really outrageous and unacceptable that these various chambers of commerce think that offering succor to the junta would be in any way acceptable at this critical time,” said Phil Robertson of the U.S.-based organization Human Rights Watch. “Foreign companies need to recognize that the Burmese people are not blind, and they will hold companies responsible for their uncritical engagement with the Myanmar military junta. For companies trying to sell goods or services in Myanmar, domestic consumer boycotts are the biggest threat.”
One of the Asian business leaders whose chamber attended the meeting acknowledged the criticisms and said “the least” the attendees could do to “mitigate the damage done” is to be transparent about their motives and the meeting. “AustCham at least has an explanation and raised their concerns over the military’s atrocities and actions,” the business figure said. “The rest are simply a disgrace.”
Since the military takeover, anti-coup protesters across the country have called for a boycott of products from military-linked or military-run companies. Among the most prominent of the latter are Myanma Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation, which are run by the Myanmar military and boast diverse portfolios that span the banking, property, construction, mining, and food and beverages sectors, among many more. Shortly after the coup, a successful boycott was launched against Myanmar Beer, a joint venture between MEHL and the Japanese beer giant Kirin, which saw its sales fall by half in May amid boycotts, which eventually forced Kirin to write off $193 million for the joint venture in August.
The Tatmadaw’s telecom company, Mytel, a partnership with the Vietnamese defense ministry, has also been the target of a boycott, while its telecom towers have come under attacks by civilian militias known as People’s Defense Forces. One industry source estimate suggests more than 100 Mytel towers have been damaged over recent weeks.
Unlike the foreign attendees, the UMFCCI is no stranger to public backlash. Two days after the coup, the business body met with the military chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. It then issued a memo forcing its own striking staff to return to work, which got leaked to the public, prompting protesters to launch a boycott campaign against the chamber and its associated companies. The UMFCCI denies the accusation that it forced striking staff to return to work.
However, the UMFCCI has continued its engagement with the junta by holding regular meetings with Investment Minister Aung Naing Oo. It also provided feedback to the junta’s Myanmar Economic Recovery Plan (MERP), released in September, which aims to revitalize the economy following the impacts of COVID-19. Its business leaders have never sought to explain or justify to the public their continued engagement with the SAC.
The Diplomat also spoke to Tin Tun Naing, the NUG’s Minister of Planning, Finance, and Investment about the meeting and the junta’s actions. Tin Tun Naing said that the SAC is “an unlawful body which has brought nothing but pain and hardship to Myanmar,” offering as a thinly-veiled swipe at the foreign chambers that met with Aung Naing Oo. “Whatever benefits them [the junta] is detrimental to our people,” he added.
In late July, the NUG Finance Ministry published a framework for investment in which it said it would not “recognize or honor investment agreements or approvals” made with the military regime since the coup. Those who had invested in the country over the past decade, though, would be treated differently.
“We also note that not all investments are the same. It is one thing to open a garment factory but quite another to set up an energy business or to get into extractive industries,” Tin Tun Naing told the Diplomat. “Garment factors bring jobs to people who are otherwise vulnerable to exploitation. Oil and gas or extractive industries bring revenue to the junta with which they line their own pockets or to buy weapons to oppress our people.”
The minister recently told Yangon-based media outlet Frontier Myanmar that the NUG was opposed to a campaign launched by Myanmar Labor Alliance to pressure and persuade brands to stop sourcing from Myanmar and for all investors to exit the country. The Alliance includes the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) and Industrial Workers’ Federation of Myanmar (IWFM). These campaigners justified their call for comprehensive economic sanctions and a garment brand boycott by saying these moves are needed to “break down the military.”
The NUG has requested the EU not to suspend Myanmar’s access to European markets through its Everything But Arms program, Frontier Myanmar said, citing official sources in both the EU and NUG.
In addition to boycott movements on the ground, military-linked companies and supporters of the regime are already facing sanctions by foreign governments. On September 2, the U.K. government slapped sanctions on Htoo Group, whose owner Tay Za is notorious for being an arms dealer and having close ties to former dictator Than Shwe. Tay Za is known in Yangon’s business community for spending millions of dollars in Singapore’s casinos, notably the Marina Bay Sands.
“Through his extensive links with the former and current junta regimes and has provided support for serious human rights violations in his role in assisting the military to procure arms,” the U.K. Foreign Office said in announcing the move. It froze all of Htoo’s UK assets and banned Tay Za from entering the country. Htoo Group days later said that “it does not agree with the stated grounds for the sanctions.”
A Myanmar-based corporate executive from Hong Kong told the Diplomat that the U.K.’s sanction against Tay Za indicates that the international community would penalize or “clip the wings” of business supporters of the military. “The message from the British government is clear: ‘we don’t want to work with irresponsible businesses.’ Past practices of sanctioning prominent businessmen who seem to be doing the junta’s bidding may be resurrected. Multilaterals, donors, and responsible investors may also stay away from business groups such as the Indian chamber and the UMFCCI.”
Robertson of Human Rights Watch, as well as Yangon-based executives, expect pressure for international sanctions to continue building in the West.
Myanmar is now heading toward a full-blown banking and currency crisis, with the kyat inflating from around 1,300 to the U.S. dollar pre-coup to nearly 2,800 at its peak in mid-September, a a loss of more than 60 percent.
The junta’s restrictions on cash withdrawals and attempted heavy monitoring of cash flows, coupled with the growing economic desperation of the public, have prompted massive withdrawals of cash from bank accounts. Efforts by the Myanmar Central Bank to intervene, such as by selling dollars into the market or instructing exporters to repatriate dollar profits within a month, are not a long-term solution, business people say, as confidence in the system has collapsed resulting in the record depreciation of the kyat.
Multiple Yangon-based senior corporate executives, who all requested anonymity for security reasons, noted that the depreciation of the kyat is not temporary and said business confidence is now so low that some investors who were hunkering down have started to reconsider their positions.
Several multinational companies have either suspended their operations or left Myanmar since the February coup as security conditions and business operations have worsened. So far Norway’s telecom giant Telenor, Germany’s wholesale firm Metro, and British American Tobacco have decided to call it a day, among others.
“I’m not sure what magical economic cure the military can do to fix the economy as a whole,” one executive said. “[Drafting a] policy is one thing but the practical disruption of the realities is another.
“Right now the people’s appetite to do business in Myanmar and confidence here has changed. Even if the policies are supposed to be the same as the National League for Democracy [NLD] administration, the realities of doing business here are just now totally different,” he added.
The regime’s proposed Myanmar Economic Relief Plan and budget plan have not effectively responded to the crises either. The MERP is primarily copied from the ousted administration’s economic plan, minus the reforms. The budget plan, meanwhile, committed over 15 percent of the budget to defense spending, the highest among all categories.
The MERP focuses on salvaging plummeting business confidence by streamlining business regulations, digitizing government services, and reducing taxes. It also seeks to revive the tourism industry and stabilize the banking sector, in addition to supporting agriculture, livestock, and fisheries. But it omits the state-owned enterprises and structural reforms put forward by the ousted NLD government, and does not mention the political and economic turmoil that has engulfed Myanmar as a result of the coup.
“With businesses and the economy affected severely by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Myanmar Economic Recovery Plan of the State Administration Council aims to revive the affected businesses, attract international and local investors, and have firms be able to restart their operations,” reads the still-confidential document, a copy of which was seen by The Diplomat.
Industry sources point to the similarities between MERP and the plans formulated by the ousted administration. Tin Tun Naing said the generals “have plagiarized while stripping elements of reform from the original [document]. It just shows both their lack of ideas and scruples.”
Branding MERP as being “detached from reality,” the NUG finance minister said, “It fails to recognize the root causes of the country’s economic calamity. The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating, but it was the military’s reckless coup and its consequences that destroyed Myanmar’s economy.”
“This so-called MERP fails to recognize, let alone address, the issues of post-coup economic paralysis, precariousness of the banking sector, acute cash shortage, the plummeting kyat against the dollar, lack of public and investor confidence, and of course increasing risk of conflict as people in some areas have had to resort to arms to defend themselves against the junta forces,” Tin Tun Naing commented.
Myanmar political analyst Khine Win echoed the same view. “The military regime cannot salvage the economy no matter with any sort of business or investment policy layout because at the end of the day it’s a political problem and a large amount of damage has been done to the people’s trust,” he said.
It’s unclear, however, if the junta is aware of the scale of the economic calamity brought on by its seizure of power eight months ago. Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing appeared in person for the opening of Myanmar’s first underpass in Yangon earlier this month and spoke dreamily about manufacturing electric cars and building a subway system in Naypyidaw. As a senior diplomat in Yangon remarked, “The generals know nothing about the economy.”
World Bank/Markus Kostner | Boats leave from the shoreline of Myanmar. (file)
The UN Country Team in Myanmar remains “deeply concerned over the humanitarian impact” of the country’s ongoing crises stemming largely from the military coup in February, the UN Spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Updating journalists at the daily media briefing in New York, Stéphane Dujarric cited humanitarians in saying that “conflict, food insecurity, natural disasters and COVID-19” have left some three million women, children and men in urgent need of life-saving assistance and protection.
“This includes one million people who were in need at the start of the year, plus an additional two million people identified as needing help after the military takeover on 1 February”, he said.
At that time, following a general election in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won by a landslide, the military seized control of the country and declared a year-long state of emergency.
As protesters took to the streets, security forces imposed curfews and other restrictions, leading to widespread alleged human rights abuses, thousands of arrests, and hundreds of deaths.
Displaced and vulnerable people
Since then, clashes between Myanmar Armed Forces, different ethnic armed organizations and people’s defense forces have left some 219,000 people newly displaced, said Mr. Dujarric.
This comes as a recent wave of COVID-19 has exacerbated the dire humanitarian situation. At the same time, floods in Rakhine and Kayin states, have left tens of thousands without water and sanitation.
“The UN once again calls on parties concerned to ensure that aid can be scaled up to reach people affected by the continued armed conflict”, said the Spokesperson.
Despite conflict and COVID, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners have been able to reach more than 33,000 people with water and sanitation supplies.
Mr. Dujarric also said that UNICEF continues to help nearly 150,000 internally displaced people and others in Kachin, Northern Shan, Rakhine and Sagaing.
Families flee
Meanwhile, the agency on Monday posted a detailed account of the deteriorating situation in Mindat – located in the southern Chin state of western Myanmar – which has been under martial law since May.
According to a UN humanitarian report, Mindat is one of the worst affected places in the country, with residents there urgent need of support.
Amid continuing armed clashes and a devasting third wave of the pandemic, UNICEF told the story in a blog post of Hay Mar and her husband, who, like many others, decided to flee the violence, forced to leaving behind some of the most vulnerable – including elderly relatives, and heavily pregnant women.
“My mother-in-law could have run with us, but she said she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay in her home”, said Hay Mar.
The family fashioned makeshift shelters in the forest, which left them with little protection from the monsoon rains.
Future of uncertainty
Two weeks after Hay Mar and her family left, she began to worry about her mother-in-law.
With her three children in tow, she decided to return to the town.
Although her youngest was petrified as they re-entered, she said that he is now slowly showing signs of overcoming the trauma and is returning to the lively boy he once was.
While Hay Mar is happy to see positive changes in him, she is unsure how long this period of peace and calm will last.
Like most of the other children in Mindat, her 12 and 17-year-olds have been out of school for almost two years – first because of the pandemic and then due to the life-threatening security crisis.
“If we live in this situation, how will my children grow? I’m very worried about their future. I just want to live in peace”, she told UNICEF.
Royal Australian Navy sailors throw heaving lines from a submarine returning to Fleet Base West near Perth, Australia, on March 19, 2020. AUSTRALIAN DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE
The bloc is struggling to preserve unity—and can’t decide what to do about the new U.S.-China rivalry.
For about two decades after the end of the Cold War, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) enjoyed a golden age. The organization’s 10 member states as well as China and the United States saw the bloc as key to the region’s security and economic integration. ASEAN as a collective entity worked hard to put itself at the center of regional architecture through a complex web of security institutions and relationships. At the height of its golden age, ASEAN believed it was in the driver’s seat of the region’s fortunes.
That golden age is over. Last week, ASEAN, which usually needs unanimous agreement to function, was struggling to preserve unity. After an emergency meeting about the crisis in Myanmar on Oct. 15, the bloc excluded Myanmar’s junta leader from an upcoming ASEAN summit, a rare move for the organization. As a loose organization without a clear strategic vision of its own, it is floundering as individual members break ranks and realign in the new U.S.-China rivalry. The recent announcement of the new so-called AUKUS military and technology pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States has raised the region’s geopolitical stakes even further, casting yet another spotlight on ASEAN’s strategic paralysis.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. In one of the world’s most dynamic regions, a system led by either the United States or China would be untenable; ASEAN therefore made its virtue out of its desire to stay out of superpower conflicts. Because of its multilateral nature, consensual decision-making, and lack of strategic ambitions beyond its borders, ASEAN was seen as an honest, neutral broker. For the region’s diplomats, so-called ASEAN centrality—that ASEAN will speak for the region as a whole when outside powers are involved—became an article of faith.
In recent years, however, the edifice of centrality has crumbled. As former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan argued, the great powers are fine with ASEAN centrality as long as it serves their interests. Individual member states have also made a mockery of the bloc’s unity by cutting their own deals with outside powers and blocking joint ASEAN action.
The first notable crack in ASEAN’s armor came in 2012. Cambodia, which held the organization’s rotating chair at the time, torpedoed an important ASEAN communiqué because drafts had mentioned the dispute between several member states and China in the South China Sea. Phnom Penh is seen to be closely aligned with Beijing.
But it’s not just China that’s working around ASEAN to achieve its goals. The Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy espoused by Australia, India, Japan, and the United States is a case in point. The strategy has innocuous-sounding principles: freedom of navigation and overflight, adherence to international law, and regional connectivity. But its power is it highlights principles China rejects. Most ASEAN members are maritime states and would strongly support these principles, but supporting the U.S.-led strategy publicly would rile China. For fear of enraging Beijing, ASEAN has struggled to take a collective position.
The same goes for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—known as the Quad and formed by those same four states—which ASEAN countries fear is another red flag to China’s bull. Although the Quad, innocuously enough, is working on tangible deliverables—such as vaccine delivery, climate measures, and emerging technologies—it can also bring power to bear in and around the South China Sea in the form of joint military exercises and training. In August and October, the four Quad members’ navies conducted maritime exercises in the Philippine Sea and the Bay of Bengal, respectively. As a testament to these drills’ growing importance, the United States announced plans to possibly include Britain’s Royal Navy in the future. That non-ASEAN powers in the region are moving forward in the critical area of maritime security highlights ASEAN’s failure to push back against Chinese assertiveness.
But nothing has shaken ASEAN as much as AUKUS. The new pact announced last month involves the United States and Britain supplying Australia’s navy with nuclear technology to power a new generation of attack submarines that could definitively shift the region’s balance of power.
By: William Choong, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and the managing editor of Fulcrum, and Sharon Seah, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and the coordinator of its ASEAN Studies Centre.
Displaced people flee violence near the town of Tabayin in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region on 2 July 2021. Farmers say the February coup has worsened food insecurity. (REUTERS)
Khin, a 59-year-old rice farmer, faced a distressing choice at the height of Myanmar’s monsoon season three months ago: sell a cow, a prized asset for agricultural households, or go hungry.
She sold the animal for half its value. The proceeds went to buy food for her family and inputs for her small rice farm in the Dry Zone – a drought-prone region in the country’s centre where farmers and agricultural experts say falling income and rising costs are worsening hunger.
“We’re just eating whatever is available,” Khin told The New Humanitarian by phone.
Months after the 1 February military coup, poverty and food insecurity are soaring in Myanmar’s Dry Zone and Ayeyarwady Delta regions – the country’s agricultural heartland – sparking warnings of a hidden crisis in the making as farming households struggle out of view of most humanitarian aid plans.
Khin blames her family’s plight on political instability since the coup and a devastating third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Costs for critical inputs such as fertiliser have soared, but crop prices have fallen.
“I’m very worried because I have no idea where to go or how to survive if things worsen,” she said. “Other farmers are in the same boat.”
The coup has upended lives across the country, exacerbated its numerous conflicts, and sent the economy into free fall. The Asian Development Bank recently predicted Myanmar’s GDP would shrink by 18.4 percent this year. The currency lost 60 percent of its value in September, Reuters reported, putting even more pressure on food and fuel prices.
The economic crash is worsening food insecurity across the country. However, the Dry Zone and Delta regions are traditionally off the aid radar, mainly because they are not in border conflict zones where humanitarian needs have typically been the most pressing.
Yet poverty is rapidly rising. The percentage of Delta households considered “extremely poor” rose from 18 percent last year to 30 percent in July, according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). A recent paper predicts that 60 percent of Myanmar’s “newly poor households” in the coming months will be in the Dry Zone and Delta.
“Aid agencies are still mostly working in more remote conflict-affected areas, albeit with some shift to urban populations obviously made poorer by COVID and the political situation,” said Derek Headey, a senior research fellow at the institute.
“But there is a lot of new poverty in the Delta and Dry Zone too, and these are major agricultural production centres and large population areas. So we’re very concerned there’s an emerging crisis in these zones that’s going under the radar.”
In interviews with The New Humanitarian, nearly a dozen Myanmar Delta or Dry Zone farmers, or aid staff who work in these areas, said that families were dipping into savings and selling long-term assets to make ends meet.
Some farmers said they’re not sure how they will continue to feed themselves over the long term. Many are taking on greater debt, while cutting back on food.
“Rising input prices and falling output crop prices [are] a double whammy that is squeezing farmers tighter and tighter,” said a Myanmar development worker who has spoken to hundreds of farmers since the coup.
Myanmar farmers and aid workers who spoke to The New Humanitarian requested that their full names not be used for fear of the military.
Under the radar
The Dry Zone and Delta regions are crucial for Myanmar’s overall food security, accounting for more than 80 percent of Myanmar’s cropped area, according to IFPRI. The two areas together account for about a third of Myanmar’s population.
But in the coup’s aftermath, more farming families are joining the ranks of the newly poor.
Aung, 45, who grows rice, maize, and pulses in the fertile Ayeyarwady Delta in the country’s south, said farmers are squeezed because traditional sources of credit – such as seed and fertiliser companies and banks – are not available.
“We can’t get loans or borrow money, which means you have to sell what you have. So we have to be very frugal,” he said. “Everything is more difficult this year.”
Kyaw, a 49-year-old farmer in Sagaing Region, part of the Dry Zone, said he has resorted to pawning and selling his wife’s jewellery to buy food for his family of eight.
“We’ve been surviving by farming and working as hired labour, but it’s not enough,” he said. “We’re now using up leftover rice from the previous years, and our savings and gold.”
Others have it worse, he added: “In some homes, they no longer have old stocks of rice left. We are trying to help each other.”
Analysts say there is an urgent need to expand food assistance to rural families in the Dry Zone and Delta.
“To overlook the food-insecure rural households in the Delta and Dry Zones would be to overlook almost half the food-insecure rural households in Myanmar,” said Duncan Boughton, a professor of agricultural, food, and resource economics at Michigan State University who was also part of the team behind the IFPRI paper.
Stephen Anderson, Myanmar country director for the World Food Programme, said the UN agency is trying to find out more about the situation in these major farming regions.
“We would be ready to step in in those instances where we see acute food insecurity developing. If there are needs, we’re ready to consider them,” he said.
The February coup has already pushed humanitarian groups to expand food aid, though the military junta continues to impose heavy restrictions. A UN-backed response plan, revised in July, tripled the number of people targeted for food security assistance – including expanding food distribution to urban areas of Yangon, Myanmar’s main commercial centre.
As in many aid operations, however, donor funding has fallen short.
“We’ve received more funding now than we had in all of last year, it’s just that the needs are outstripping the available funding,” Anderson said.
Violence and the coronavirus
Humanitarian needs are growing in areas that have typically been spared the brunt of Myanmar’s conflicts, but post-coup violence is still escalating.
In some areas, there are regular clashes between the junta’s troops and local resistance forces who have teamed up with ethnic armed groups that have been fighting for autonomy for decades. Bombings and targeted assassinations in major towns and cities are becoming more common.
Kyaw, the 49-year-old farmer, said soldiers have been raiding many villages in his part of Sagaing, looking for residents suspected of being members of the local resistance forces.
“I can’t even explain how cruel they are,” he said. “Whenever they come, they just arrest whoever they see. So now everyone flees when they come.”
COVID-19 is adding to the farmers’ woes. Positivity rates have dropped from 37 percent in late July to 6 percent in mid-October, but the virus continues to spread. Healthcare delivery has been severely constrained since the coup; only about 15 percent of the population have received a COVID-19 vaccine dose – well below rates in most other countries in the region.
Labourers are falling ill, said Yin, an office worker from a farming family in southern Mandalay Region, which forms part of the Dry Zone.
“A lot of people said they came down with the flu but the illness sounds very similar to COVID-19 because people were losing their sense of smell,” she said.
“In our villages, planting is still being done by hand, so it was really difficult for farmers to hire people, and it means you cannot finish preparing the land or planting in time,” she added.
The rising food insecurity and poverty in the Delta and Dry Zone could have far-reaching repercussions in Myanmar, which has a largely rural population and relies heavily on the agricultural sector, said the development worker.
Poverty and food are immediate worries. But the farmers struggling today also need help to adapt to longer-term threats exacerbated by climate change – more volatile floods and drought, erratic rains, and more risks from pests and crop diseases.
“That critical support and focus on the environment has fallen off the radar,” the development worker said.
“I would ask aid agencies to not abandon Myanmar at this time, even though it might be tempting since it is such a difficult operating environment,” she added.
