3 June 2022
F me. I saw a headline re the two execution items and hadnât seen who. 
Theyâve sentenced a law student to 20 years and the reason is not yet known, to the public at least.
Magway University Interim Administrative Council announced on 20 March that they could confirm news that detained students and lecturers of Magway University were being severely tortured in various ways. According to secret letters sent by the detainees, junta authorities sometimes make them eat the rice mixed with dirt/dust, do not provide enough water and restrict them to take a bath only once a week. Also, juntas force them to walk around with naked feet under the burning sun when the daily temperature is around 95°F in Magway Division during daytime.
Despite being in critical conditions of mental and physical health, the severely injured detainees are not allowed to receive any medical treatment in the prison till now. Therefore, the Interim Council urged for help for the detainees who are suffering both physically and mentally.
Our person was recently convicted and sentenced. Not to death.
9 June 2022
More of just a thread bump. I got curious about ICRCâs access to prisoners. They were given it in 2013 but as I understand it they havenât been given access after the coup. There was a meeting last June:
ICRC has continued supporting IDPâs after the coup.
15 June 2022
The coup regime is keeping the home fires burning.
I didnât know much about Johns Hopkins Professor Karl D Jackson, but heâs being criticized for going to Myanmar to give the bogus âUnion Election Commissionâ a photo op. New Light of Myanmar is the voice of the propaganda ministry.
For more coherent thoughts on US Policy, State Counsellor Derek Chollet was interviewed recently by The Irrawaddy and called the ruling military âa bunch of thugs.â
NUG says there have been nearly 2800 war crimes committed by junta forces in the past six months.
Annd the post-coup economy is in such shambles, the World Bank has no idea what to make of it:
The economy of Myanmar has contracted so sharply since the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021 that the World Bank has declined to issue growth forecasts for the country beyond fiscal 2021.
âForecast[s] for Myanmar beyond 2021 are excluded because of a high degree of uncertainty,â the World Bank stated in its Global Economic Prospects report released on June 7.
In other words, things are so unstable no one wants to be on the hook for pinning the tail on the GDP donkey. (Gross Donkey Product?)
22 June 22
UK has expanded sanctions.
The Diplomat asks if the EU is so against the death penalty, why arenât they doing more about Ko Jimmy and Phyo Zeya Thaw? Will EU wait until theyâre hanged to express their late outrage?
Outrage served fresh: UNHCHR Michelle Bachelet condemns âsystematic and widespread tacticsâ by the military against the civilian population.
ASEANâs 16th ever Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM) is scheduled in Phnom Penh today, with addenda meetings the following day on video for military medicine and for gawd knows why on counter terrorism in Moscow the next day, being coordinated under a âmyanmar.ewgctâ gmail address so WTF?
I donât know the status of calls to not invite the junta:
29 June 2022
Time flies and yet Brad Sherman remains trapped in his Rohingya script from 2017. BUT good news, he did meet with Aung Kyaw Moe the Rohingya advisor. I am very certain his 2/3 tweet was not reflective of that conversation because, well, itâs a lie and heâs been corrected many times now.
Heâs attaching great importance to the fact that Aung Kyaw Moe is an âadvisor toâ the NUG and (in his understanding) technically not a member of the NUG.
Iâm fine with that. The repeated lie is 2/3 - NUG has absolutely spelled out a plan embracing citizenship rights for people born in Myanmar and further said that includes rights of children of such people who are born abroad (i.e. refugee camps). Heâs been corrected on this numerous times.
AKM is a very cool guy, so itâs great that they met. And it is also true that NUG must formalize a Rohingya role with real influence, whether that is Aung Kyaw Moe or another Rohingya leader. Without doing so, it puts this terrific person and resource in a terrible spot where they appear to be a PR gambit by NUG. He has been very careful in his statements about this role and reached out to many in the Rohingya community to also spell out his own stance - which is spot on in representing their wishes. This 2/3 tweet from Sherman though (Iâm certain, having been watching Sherman on this issue for a year and a half now) doesnât come out of that meeting. Itâs Shermanâs script which he keeps repeating and keeps having people correct. For example, when he made this same assertion in front of the State Dept. witnesses during a public hearing (in which he also claimed that Aung Kyaw Moeâs position did not even exist more than 9 months after the appointment), the NUG policy I just mentioned was immediately RE-circulated live to all of the committee members by committee staff. Shermanâs foreign affairs advisor had already been told about this policy months earlier and there were public tweets also blasting Sherman in response to his tweets at those times which are almost identical to this tweet 2/3.
1 July 2022
- Junta flew a MIG into Thai airspace. Oops. Sorry. Annnd apology accepted. Instantly. Gotta keep that gas flowing.
- Apparently Tatmadaw air just bombed Tatmadaw troops. I have killed the link, sorry, but regardless of house rules which this probably also violates, I am not going to post depictions of what even appear to be war casualties. Iâm also undecided as to the authenticity of the claim and too tired to deal with it TBH.
- Obo prison in Mandalay is a complete fuckfest. There was a riot not too long ago, they locked over 100 prisoners in a putrid fish warehouse as punishment for celebrating DASSKâs birthday, and the regime has arrested several lawyers who had only come to the prison to attend hearings in which their clients are on trial.
Late add:
- I was sure I posted this way back when the article came out. But anyway, per one of the links about, a large number of prisoners were transferred from Monywa to Obo prison. The people of Monywa are some tough nuts to crack. Thereâs a phrase applied to them that is nearly impossible to translate so I wonât try, but this is a good read. My own contribution? Maybe co-opt the phrase already co-opted by the lovely people of Philadelphia.
Monywa: F-ck Around And Find Out.
-
Please sign the petition for Bulgari to stop with the Burmese gems.
7 July 2022
More âwrongful detaineeâ insight in terms of the inside thinking on the thing Iâm not talking about, our proxy being B-ball player Brittney Griner, whoâs trapped in Russia, from NY Times Daily. Weâre increasingly worried.
RFA write about evidence of atrocities on smuggled cell phone footage which is very disturbing with soldiers bragging about who and how theyâve killed; however, should you decide to watch it (and Iâm going to discuss with RFA directly, once Iâve seen whether they noticed this)⌠it is about 1/3 down the page here⌠Keep in mind that weâre talking about a cult with the tatmadaw and note how the guy in the middle says heâs a noob. Iâd love your feedback too, because what Iâm seeing here is indoctrination. If you watch where the selfie ownerâs other hand goes, itâs clingy if not actually sexual, and itâs programming this new soldier that the others are his family now and he will be doing the same things they do.
Edit: Check out this new conflict map.
16 July 2022
Awesome find @GagHalfrunt !
Further the economic issues are coming to a head with the central bank telling itâs account holders to go ahead and default on their loans from foreign lenders in order to keep their cash in country. There are also indications theyâre rolling back the exceptions they had made to big foreign investors and will now proceed to force them to exchange currency immediately and only trade in the sinking Kyat. This may have major blowback with investors who arenât deeply rooted taking flight.
The regime has been using proxies to assassinate NLD members. The latest: NLD Executive U Kyaw Myint.
Iâd like to post more but, checkout the latest from The Irrawaddy.
22 July 2022
Thereâs been increasing attention on US-designated wrongful detainees due to the Griner case, coinciding with a new symbol being rolled out similar to the POW/MIA flag.
Designers have kept in mind the use of digital badges and avatars, and there is also an effort by a group of families to raise the profiles of their loved ones with a new mural featuring 28 of them in Washington DC.
Through a representative group that represents a handful of the families they are pressing for direct contact with President Biden and this was likely to be a substantial demand made in Washington this week. The day before this mural was unveiled, a new executive order was announced that designates nations holding wrongful detainees with a stronger travel warning which basically gives that nation a failing grade and warns other Americans that at least one American is wrongfully held there.
The roll out to individual nations so designated was made pretty quickly for Burma. Frontier Myanmar (for whom Danny Fenster had worked and no longer worked prior to his being detained) had taken note of this and asked the embassy. They report being told there is an American being held, that the name isnât being released for security reasons, and learning from other sources that the detaineeâs family is urging discretion.
It is a heavy thing for a family to weigh this out, even while other families are pushing for high profile attention. Itâs a question of whether that attention will be to the advantage of the prisoner and increase their chances of being released. The flip side of that is greater risk on the release front, if the people holding them begin to believe they can get more out of the US govât than the govât can or is willing to offer. For example it is extremely unlikely the US would trade anything conferring actual legitimacy - like direct diplomacy with MAH or endorsing the coup entity to be seated at the UN. It would suck if the prisoner were dragged into demands like that. Richardsonâs path has to do with things that can benefit more people there, humanitarian aid and medical support etc. In the case of Myanmar, the path forward is already somewhat well trodden and the personnel within the regime whoâve dealt with the Richardson team are (to my knowledge) all still in place.
However, it appears Richardsonâs being prioritized to Russia for the moment. We hope that gets done quickly and they can turn their attention back to Burma where the jails may be even more inhospitable than those in Russia.
23 July 2022 (early)
âI canât forget herâ - Myanmarâs soldiers admit atrocities - BBC News
Trigger warning. See headline.
But Myanmarâs military is increasingly having to hire soldiers and militias due to defections and killings by the PDF.
Some 10,000 people have defected from both the army and the police since the 2021 coup, according to a group called Peopleâs Embrace, formed by former military and police personnel.
âThe military is struggling to maintain its multi-front civil war,â says Michael Martin from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
âItâs running into personnel problems both in the officer ranks and the enlisted ranks, itâs taking heavy casualties, problems with recruitment, problems getting equipment and supplies and thatâs reflected by the fact that they seem to be losing territory or control of territory in various parts of the country.â
Magway and Sagaing regions (where the above incidents happened) were one of the historic recruitment grounds for Myanmarâs military.
But young people here are instead choosing to join the PDF groups.
25 July 2022 (early)
Iâm told junta media reports the executions of [corrected to four] Kyaw Min Yu (Ko Jimmy), Phyo Zeyaw Thaw, Hla Myo Aung, and Aung Thura Zaw.
I have spiked my afternoon soda.
26 July 2022
Last weekâs announcement re American detainee(s) has led to a round of personal firefighting surrounding best course of action and when and how to publicize it. If you happen to catch a story naming the detainee please IM me. Iâd sincerely appreciate this. As a free press advocate itâs very awkward to be asking press to hold off or modify published stories; however, if it had been seen as advantageous to campaign with the detaineeâs name this would have been happening months ago.
I think ultimately it wonât be âour decisionâ but until it isnât, I donât mind trying to tamp out these fires in case a breakthrough is coming soon.
