By Ron Corben

Voice of America

March 14, 2017

BANGKOK — A close associate of murdered Myanmar lawyer Ko Ni says the constitutional expert was working on a plan to weaken the military's political power when he was gunned down at Yangon's airport soon after his return from a conference in Indonesia on January 29.

The revelation is likely to feed persistent suspicions – which have been denied – that the military had a role in the assassination.

Military still holds power

Despite handing over power to a civilian government led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) party of activist Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar armed forces retain wide powers under a constitution it promulgated in 2008.

That constitution guarantees the military 25 percent of the seats in parliament and gives it a veto over any constitutional amendment. It also controls the Ministry of Home Affairs, giving it authority over much of the nation's permanent bureaucracy.

Murdered lawyer Ko Ni may have found a loophole around the military

But commentator Bertil Lintner, a close associate of Ko Ni who also worked with him on journalism training, told VOA in an interview that the prominent NLD adviser believed he had uncovered a "loophole" that could be used to circumvent the military veto.

"[Ko Ni] said that there is nothing in the 2008 constitution which says that the constitution cannot be abolished by a single vote in parliament," Lintner said. 

He said a simple majority vote was all that is needed "to abolish the constitution and adopt a new one. He was working on it."

Lintner said Aung San Suu Kyi considered the idea "too provocative" and preferred efforts at gradual reform. But he said Ko Ni remained insistent.

Police investigating the killing have said the plot to kill Ko Ni was hatched in a tea shop last year by men who had a grudge against the lawyer. Several arrests have been made in the case.

Commentator thinks Ko Ni's murder was a warning

But Lintner said he believes Ko Ni's killing was intended as a warning.

"His murder was meant to send a very strong signal to anyone else who would even dream or think of changing the constitution. And therefore it was carried out in broad daylight outside the airport," he said.

He added the killing had created a "climate of fear" within the NLD party.

National League for Democracy denies the murder created fear within the party

NLD spokesman Win Thein denied that, while acknowledging that Ko Ni's loss was a blow for the party.

"It was definitely ... not fear. (Ko Ni's death) was a great loss, it was a great loss," Win Thein said.

He said the party's relationship with the military is "just the same" as before, and the NLD is "definitely" not nervous over the political climate. He added that the NLD would "never lose hope of amending the constitution."

Ko Ni called an "expert" on the 2008 Constitution

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for the New York-based rights organization Human Rights Watch, said Ko Ni was one of only a few people within the NLD who fully understood the nation's 2008 military-backed charter.

"Let's be clear, U Ko Ni was the technician," Robertson told a briefing at the foreign correspondent club (FCCT). "The NLD has no one to replace him in terms of dealing with the constitution. And if you look at the current configuration of Burmese politics, the 2008 constitution is about central to everything."

Tony Davis, an analyst with HIS Janes, agreed that Ko Ni was widely seen as a danger to the military's influence.

"This man posed an existential threat not just to the [military's] bank accounts, their future, but to the future of the country as they and their fallen comrades and their fathers have seen it since independence [in 1948]," Davis said at the FCCT. 

He said Ko Ni's killing points to a "bleak outlook" for Myanmar's political landscape.

The next general elections are in 2020.

BANGKOK — In Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, inter-communal violence in 2012 caused a surge of killings, arson attacks and mob violence that led tens of thousands of mostly Muslim Rohingya to seek refuge in camps or flee the country by boat. Since then, the violence has ebbed, but thousands remain in squalid camps. There are now signs of hope that the community is starting to reconcile.

For three years, Rakhine has been synonymous with violence and human misery. Violence between communities largely broke down along sectarian and ethnic lines, with Buddhist villagers facing off against mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya. It led around 140,000 people to flee their homes for government controlled areas and camps backed by nongovernment organizations.

Conditions in U.N. Refugee Agency camps have continued to deteriorate ever since.

But two Australian academics who've been studying the community say a recent survey indicates growing support for reconciliation on both sides.

Anthony Ware and Ronan Lee from Melbourne’s Deakin University carried out a study based on interviews with 600 people and community leaders in Rakhine state.

“We discovered that there was much more sympathy on the part of both communities for the other community and the situation the others found themselves in," Lee said. "There was, I think, a surprising degree of flexibility on the part of both communities in terms of accepting the other and its rights and its role."

Rohingya are not a recognized ethnic group of Myanmar, also known as Burma, and so lack citizenship. They were not allowed to vote in the country’s recent election. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated more than 800,000 individuals in Rakhine State lack citizenship.

Myanmar’s central government and Rakhine Buddhist communities oppose the use of the name “Rohingya,” a disputed term that covers some 1.3 million Muslims living largely in northern Rakhine townships.

But Lee says while those in the Muslim community still wish to be considered as "Rohingya" in any move to formal identification, many are ready to be flexible, but reject any use of the term "Bengali" referred to in government circles.

Citizenship issue

“What’s actually going on is that there is a difference of opinion as to which group of people should be allowed to use the name ‘Rohingya’. But then when you ask the Muslims how much do you believe that the name Rohingya is really, really important to your identity, their attitude was very much; ‘look we just want our rights and our citizenship – we want to be part of Myanmar – we have lived here for generations, we have a heritage here that goes back hundreds of years,’” said Lee.

Apart from the citizenship issue, researchers found common ground among both Buddhists and Muslims.

Both communities have suffered because of the violence, at the same time that the broader economy in Myanmar has been buoyed by outside investment and energized economic activity encouraged by the country’s political opening.

Lee says there is a sense on both sides that Rakhine is being left behind by Myanmar’s economic revival, in part because investors have been wary of the region’s instability.

Economic interdependence

Lee says both sides are very much economically interdependent. Buddhists work in agriculture and the Muslim community has been involved in fishing and commerce.

Sean Turnell from Sydney’s Macquarie University says the academics’ assessment offers hope for the region’s future given the past backdrop of violence.

“I would imagine if you can see some [economic] assistance provided and it’s transparent in a way that various jealousies and tensions arising from that may not take place that seems to me, as I say, quite at least a little bit hopeful,” he said.

For now, the community, like the rest of Myanmar, is looking to Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) to see what the country’s incoming political power has planned. Aung San Suu Kyi has said that giving citizenship to Rohingya is not a priority for her administration, but her plans for economic development could help this fractured community heal.

Activists say that up to 19,000 people - mostly Rohingya Muslims - have set sail from Myanmar's western Rakhine state to Thailand to escape violence and deteriorating living conditions.

There are around 800,000 Rohingyas living in Myanmar, also known as Burma. The minority group lives predominantly in the western state of Rakhine. They are not officially recognized by the Myanmar government as an ethnic minority group, and for decades they have been subjected to discrimination and violence by the Buddhist majority.

Viewed by the United Nations and the US as one of the world's most persecuted minorities, many Rohingyas have fled to neighboring countries such as Bangladesh, India and also to Thailand to escape persecution.

Despite the fact that Myanmar has embarked on a series of political and economic reforms, human rights organizations and activists say the situation for Myanmar's ethnic communities has not significantly improved.

Many Rohingya Muslims are fleeing from the northern Maungdaw and Buthidaung cities of Myanmar's Rakhine state, and also from Sittwe, Rakhine's capital, which was the center of sectarian violence last year. The clashes between ethnic Buddhists and Muslim Rohingyas in the state lead to the destruction of homes, shops and places of worship and has left almost 200 dead and nearly 120,000 people displaced.

Discriminatory treatment and abuse

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, says Myanmar needs to address the Rohingya issue urgently.

"There is a need to put concerted pressure on the Burmese authorities to get Rohingyas recognized as citizens. The government should start a registration process to grant citizenship to these people and to end discriminatory treatment and abuses against Rohingyas."

The UN says that conditions in the refugee camps in the Myebon town of Rakhine are "particularly shocking," with sanitation there being "very, very poor indeed."

Chris Lewa, director of the non-government organization The Arakan Project, is in regular contact with Myanmar's Rohingyas. He says living conditions in the camps are horrendous and that a number of people don't receive the aid sent to them. "Aid deliveries have been hampered and at times blocked to the Muslim camps."

In its latest assessment, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders calls on the Myanmar government and community leaders to ensure greater security for people in Rakhine in the face of reports of “alarming numbers” of acutely malnourished and ill children in the camps.

"Skin infections, worms, chronic coughing and diarrhea are the most common ailments seen through more than 10,000 medical consultations in the camps since October 2012," the report said.

Statelessness

The violence and difficult living conditions have also driven Rohingyas to risk their lives at sea. Rights groups fear “several hundred” men, women and children from the region may have been lost at sea already. One estimate has put the death toll as high as 500.

Last year, the UNHCR estimated that around 13, 000 people - including Rohingyas from western Myanmar and Bangladesh - fled on boats. And many of the refugees are children. Thailand's English language daily, The Bangkok Post, interviewed 14-year-old Mohammad Ayu from Rakhine state, who is one of many under-aged children to set sail on their own, seeking refuge in Thailand after losing family members to violence in Myanmar. Ayu said children were paying between 5,000 and 60,000 kyats (4.25 euros - 50.57 euros) to board boats. His, he said, had been adrift for weeks before his group was stopped and transferred by uniformed officers and then handed over to a broker.

Activists continue to report that human smugglers are also taking advantage of the situation and earn large sums of money from fleeing Rohingyas.

Regional solution

According to Thailand Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), almost 6,000 Rohingyas have arrived in Thailand since October last year. The Thai Government is allowing Rohingyas to stay in the country for up to six months. The Thai Foreign Ministry is also holding talks with other states to enable those at the centers to move on.

Colonel Kriskorn Paleethunyawong, deputy commander of Thailand's Songkhla Provincial Police, told The Bangkok Post that the Rohingya migrants should be prosecuted as illegal immigrants like everyone else who enters the country illegally.

Lewa of the Arakan Project has recently visited some of the refugee camps in Thailand. He fears for the well-being of the people living there. "They live in overcrowded immigration detention centers in Thailand. We have seen in the past that people have actually died in custody."

He says a long-term solution is needed to address the issue. "There should be a regional solution as it affects various countries in the region - including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia - which cannot solve the problem individually."

Panitan Wattanyagorn, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University, backs calls for a regional response: "The international community should come up with better guidelines to separate the people who are seeking work and the people who are really in danger."