မေန႔က ဟုိၾကည့္ ဒီၾကည့္နဲ႔ Vimeo ဆုိက္ဒ္ထဲမွာ ၀င္ေမႊေႏွာက္ေနမိသည္။ Nat Pwe ဆုိေသာ အထက္ပါ ဗီဒီယုိ ကလစ္ကုိ ၾကည့္မိေတာ့ စိတ္ဆုိး ေဒါသ ထြက္ရသည္။ စိတ္ဆင္းရဲမိသည္။ တုိ႔လူမ်ိဳးေတြ ဒီေလာက္ေတာင္မွ အစြဲအလန္း ၾကီးလွခ်ည္လားဟု အံ့ၾသ မိသည္။ ဗုဒၵဘာသာပင္ ကုိးကြယ္ျငားေသာ္လည္း ခ်င့္ခ်ိန္ယံုၾကည္မႈ အားလဲ အားနည္း ေနသည္ဟုျမင္ မိသည္။ facebook ထဲက သူငယ္ခ်င္း တစ္ေယာက္ ကေတာ့ သုိ႔ကလုိ မွတ္ခ်က္ေပးသြားသည္။ “ေတာင္ျပဳန္းကိုတပ္နဲ႔ဝိုင္း၊ နတ္ေတြကိုအစိုးရအမိန္႔နဲ႔ အရာရုပ္သိမ္း၊ လူေတြအကုန္သင္းတန္းေပး၊ စနစ္တက်ရြာေျပာင္း၊ နတ္ကေတာ္ေတြအကုန္ဖမ္း၊ ခံဝန္ထိုး၊ ပညာေပး၊ အလုပ္လဲေပး၊ နတ္ရုပ္ေတြျပတိုက္ပို႔၊ တာင္ျပဳန္းနဲ႔လုပ္စားေနတဲ့စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းေတြအကုန္ဒဏ္တပ္၊ အေရးယူ…။” တဲ့ က်ေနာ္ စဥ္းစားေနသည္ႏွင့္ မကုိက္ညီေသာ္လည္း သူ႔စိတ္ကူး စိတ္သန္းကုိယ္ေတာ့ နည္းနည္းေတာ့ သေဘာက် သလုိေတာ့ ရွိမိသည္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ပညာေပးခ်င္းျဖင့္သာလွ်င္ အျမစ္ျပတ္ႏုိင္မည္ ဟု က်ေနာ့္ အေနနဲ႔ ယံုၾကည္မိသည္။ အေနာ္ရထာ မင္းႀကီး သည္ပင္လွ်င္ နတ္ ကုိးကြယ္မႈ အား အၾကမ္းနည္းျဖင့္ ႏွိမ္ႏွင္းဖုိ႔ ႀကိဳးစားခဲ့ဖူးသည္။ မေအာင္ျမင္ သျဖင့္သာ ဒီေန႔ ဒီအခ်ိန္အထိ ဆက္လက္ အားေကာင္းၿမဲ အားေကာင္းဆဲ ျဖစ္ေနခဲ့သည္ မဟုတ္ပါလား။
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Tomorrow is the Buddha’s Birthday …
In 623 B.C. on a full-moon day of May — Vasanta-tide, when in India the trees were laden with leaf, flower, and fruit, and man, bird, and beast were in joyous mood—Queen Mahamaya was travelling in state from Kapilavatthu to Devadaha, her parental home, according to the custom of the times, to give birth to her child. But that was not to be, for halfway between the two cities, in the beautiful Lumbini Grove, under the shade of a flowering Sal tree, she brought forth a son. Lumbini, or Rummindei, the name by which it is now known, is one hundred miles north of Varanasi and within sight of the snowcapped Himalayas.
At this memorable spot where Prince Siddhattha, the future Buddha, was born, Emperor Asoka, 316 years after the event, erected a mighty stone pillar to mark the holy spot. The inscription engraved on the pillar in five lines consists of ninety-three Asokan characters, among which occurs the following: “hida budhe jate sakyamuni. Here was born the Buddha, the sage of the Sakyans.” The mighty column is still to be seen. The pillar, as crisp as the day it was cut, had been struck by lightning even when Hiuen Tsiang, the Chinese pilgrim, saw it towards the middle of the seventh century A.C. The discovery and identification of Lumbini Park in 1896 is attributed to the renowned archaeologist, General Cunningham. On the fifth day after the birth of the prince, the king summoned eight wise men to choose a name for the child and to speak of the royal babe’s future. He was named Siddhartha, which means one whose purpose has been achieved. The brahmins deliberated and seven of them held up two fingers each and declared: “O King, this prince will become a cakravarti, a universal monarch, should he deign to rule, but should he renounce the world, he will become a samma-sambuddha, a Supremely Enlight- ened One, and deliver humanity from ignorance.” But Kondhnna, the wisest and the youngest, after watching the prince, held up only one finger and said: “O King, this prince will one day go in search of truth and become a Supremely Enlightened Buddha.”
Civil society groups protest Asean government appointments
Asean governments have apparently taken control of civil society group nominations and agenda-setting for the May 7 interface dialogue between civil society groups and Asean leaders in Jakarta, the Bangkok Post reports.
Under the Asean charter’s principle of ‘a people-centered Asean’, civil society groups and representatives are encouraged to participate in the process of Asean integration and community-building, but the governments of Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines and Burma have all hand-picked civil society delegates who they favor, according to the Post.
More than 1,000 members of regional Asean civil society met on Tuesday and Wednesday to exchange ideas on a variety of important issues at the Jakarta 2011 Asean Civil Society Conference (ACSC) and the Asean People’s Forum (APF) and will present collective recommendations to Asean leaders on May 7.
As a result of the Asean selection process, some NGO representatives have threatened to boycott the interface dialogue meeting.
Aung San Su Kyi’s message to Brighton Festival
Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi may be reluctant to take a trip out of Burma for fear of not being let back in, but that has not stopped her from headlining a popular arts festival in Britain.
Suu Kyi is the ‘guest director’ of the Brighton Festival 2011 to be held in this British coastal resort from May 7 to 29.
This year the organizers of the popular event chose Suu Kyi and the themes of freedom of speech, human rights and freedom for political prisoners. The festival helps tell of the issues concerning Burma through the arts.
According to Burma Campaign UK director Anna Roberts, ‘It’s fantastic that a festival of this calibre can celebrate Aung San Suu Kyi and keep Burma’s cause and the fight for human rights in the public eye at such a critical time’.
The festival provides a mix of music, film, drama and talks, including a debate on ‘The Future of Burma’ with Sue Lloyd Roberts, Burmese activist Zoya Phan and Robert Gordon, British ambassador to Burma 1995-99. The documentaries ‘Burma Soldier’ and ‘Burma VJ’ will also be shown.
Music and the arts are said to have been important to Suu Kyi during her life, split between Burma, Britain, the United States, Bhutan and India.
Suu Kyi will not attend this major arts festival. But in a message she appealed to the participants ‘to use your freedom of expression to let the world know what it is like in our country, what it is like to not be able to say what you want to say’.
The pro-democracy leader is conscious that she has to remain in Burma. If she traveled abroad, there is fear that the authorities might not allow her to return.
Suu Kyi says in her video message that the artists taking part should show Burma’s leaders how it was ‘not to hurt people, not to accuse anybody of anything, but simply to express what we would wish to see in our country, what our aspirations are, what our hopes are, what our beliefs are and we are not able to do this.
‘But you who have so much creativity and who have understood that variety is the very spice of life and would be able to help us to make the world understand’.
Suu Kyi, an avid piano player, says she loves Western classical music but in a recent interview with the Guardian newspaper of London, she admitted to also being a fan of the rock band Grateful Dead, a group one of her sons encouraged her to listen to. She said she also likes Bob Marley’s ‘Get Up, Stand Up’, that includes the lyrics, ‘get up, stand up, stand up for your rights’.
It seems fitting that the festival will begin with Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’, an opera that tells how Leonore, disguised as a prison guard named Fideleo, rescues her husband from death in a political prison. Suu Kyi has spent time in prison and lengthy periods under house arrest.
As she says in her video, if Burma’s rulers could only ‘understand how much we have to gain by more freedom of expression, I think we will make substantial steps towards the direction of democratization’.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate said: ‘We all think of the Brighton Festival as an occasion, a time for festivity, for diversity, for creativity, for expression, for freedom of expression. This is especially important to us in Burma who have been deprived of this right of freedom for very many years’.
Passport applying in Burma
The Myanmar Passport Office on Pansodan Street in Rangoon is a busy place. As one applicant found recently, standing for ages in line, filling out forms, running up and down stairs, and paying various fees gets you only so far. The applicant, John Htay, a pseudonym, then faced the prospect of waiting for a month to have his passport issued.
Getting a Burmese passport requires time, official fees and––if you’re in a hurry––grease money during every step of the process. Photo: Mizzima
The passport process in Burma is said to have been improved. The office used to be notorious for red tape and complicated procedures. But as John Htay found, the process was still laboured and paying a relatively large sum of money could speed things up.
‘I had come to this office in order to then seek a job in either Singapore or Malaysia and to avoid being an unemployed graduate’, he said.
‘If you want the passport urgently, you must pay a tout at the passport office 200,000-300,000 kyat (US$ 234-351) but you have to contact this tout daily’, he said.
John Htay decided to go it alone. Unfortunately, he had chosen a Monday, which is a particularly crowded day to commence the process.
The people standing in the queue rushed towards the office as soon as the gates were opened. Iron bar barriers are erected outside with two rows, one for entry and another for exit.
John Htay said he rushed to the entry gate, only to be stopped by a security guard, who told him to leave his bag outside. That cost him a small fee for looking after the bag, even before entering.
‘Full of anxiety, I entered the office with a lot of papers in my hand. Then I asked a police officer about the complicated procedures of this office. He explained to me in detail from A to Z and also suggested I look at the procedures pasted on the office wall’.
Passport application in any country is seldom a simple process, although some countries have tried to improve their systems or outsourced the process to commercial firms.
But in the Myanmar Passport Office, there are a number of hurdles to jump.
First, he had to get his photo taken, which cost him 3,500 kyat ($4). Then he lined up in another queue, to verify the details of his household registration and his ID card. He handed over 1,000 kyat, as people ahead of him in the queue did, because he had heard this would ease passage.
Then he walked upstairs to buy a set of passport application forms for 2,000 kyat. It was hard to find a space in the crowded room to fill them out. While he was standing in a queue of over 100 people to pay the passport application fee, he filled out a cash remittance form, following the example of a sample form pasted on the wall.
He paid the $22 passport fee and a $1.20 service fee. ‘I don’t know why they charge for this unpleasant and uneasy service of standing in a long queue, which made me dizzy’, he complained.
On the next day, he returned to pick up his passport photos. He photocopied his cash remittance receipt and then had to pay another small fee, which was said to be for the cost of passport ink, paper and maintenance of office equipment. He was then to go upstairs to buy another form, paying $2.34.
He said he felt exhausted and upset with all the forms to fill out that included spaces for the names of cousins, brothers and sisters, both maternal and paternal. Then he had to have the forms checked and verified. The woman behind the counter checked the forms thoroughly. John Htay said the clerk told him the process was much more user-friendly than it used to be, but then asked him if he wanted the process finished in one day. When he said yes, she said it would cost $35. He bargained the price down to $29. After some time, the process was finished and an appointment date was set to then submit another form.
At this point, it was made clear that if he wanted his passport issued within a few days, he would have to pay 150,000 kyat ($174) to a tout, otherwise it would take a month. He paid the extra fee.
Clearly, he said, the smartly dressed policemen with their mobile phones are busy, even in their lunchtime, with this lucrative business.
But as John Htay said, even once he had his new passport in hand, he still would have to pay for the tax clearance forms he needed to fill out to hand in at the airport on departure. This was one more expense in the greasing of the wheels.
