အႏုပညာ သင္ခန္းစာေတြ ရႏိုင္တဲ့ `ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍´ ၿငိမ္းေဝ (ကဗ်ာ့အိုးေဝ)

အႏုပညာ

သင္ခန္းစာေတြ ရႏိုင္တဲ့ `ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍´

ၿငိမ္းေဝ (ကဗ်ာ့အိုးေဝ)| April 1, 2015  

http://burma.irrawaddy.org/entertainment/2015/04/01/73347.html

(က)
၁၉၈၈ ခု၊ ဇူလိုင္လ ၂၈ ရက္၊ ၀ါဆိုလျပည့္ေန႔။
ေန႔လယ္ သံုးနာရီေလာက္မွာ ေရႊတိဂံု ေစတီေတာ္ႀကီးရဲ႕ အေရွ႕ဘက္ ေစာင္းတန္းမ်ားမွ တဆင့္ လူတခ်ိဳ႕ ပံုသ႑ာန္ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးနဲ႔ ဘုရား ရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ေပၚ တက္လာၾက ပါတယ္။ သူတို႔ တေတြဟာ မည္သူမွ် ဘုရားေပၚတက္လို႔ မရေအာင္ ပိတ္ဆို႔ ေစာင့္ၾကပ္ေန ၾကတဲ့ လံုၿခံဳေရးတပ္ေတြရဲ႕ ေရွ႕က ေအးေအးေဆးေဆး ျဖတ္ေက်ာ္လာၿပီးမွ ရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ေပၚ ေရာက္လာၾက တာပါ။
ဒီလူအုပ္ဟာ ေစာင္းတန္း တခ်ိဳ႕ထဲက ဘုရားဖူးေတြကို ႐ိုင္း႐ိုင္းစိုင္းစိုင္း ဆဲဆိုေမာင္းထုတ္ၿပီး ပါလာတဲ့ ဖဲထုပ္ေတြ ခ်ကာ ဖဲ႐ိုက္တဲ့သူက ႐ိုက္ပါတယ္။ မေကာင္းတဲ့ မိန္းမေတြနဲ႔ ေပ်ာ္ပါးမလား ဆိုၿပီး ဘုရားဖူးေတြကို ေျပာင္ေျပာင္ တင္းတင္း လိုက္ေမးပါတယ္။ ပါလာတဲ့ အရက္ပုလင္းေတြ ဖန္ခြက္ေတြ ခ်ၿပီး အရက္၀ုိင္း ဖြဲ႔ၾကပါ တယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ေပၚက အလႉခံပံုး ဟူသမွ်ကို ႐ိုက္ခြဲၿပီး အလႉေငြပိုက္ဆံေတြကို ယူလိုက္ၾကပါတယ္။
ဒီလူေတြဟာ စုတ္ျပတ္ေနတဲ့ အ၀တ္အစားေတြ ၀တ္စားထားၾကၿပီး အရက္နံ႔ တေထာင္းေထာင္းနဲ႔  မူးယစ္ေသစာမ်ား ေသာက္စားထားၾကသူေတြ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အေပါစားမိတ္ကပ္နဲ႔ ႏႈတ္ခမ္းနီဆိုးထားတဲ့ မိန္းမေတြလည္း ပါလာပါတယ္။
အဲသလို မူးယစ္ရမ္းကားေနသူေတြ ရင္ျပင္္္္္္္္ေတာ္ေပၚ တက္လာတဲ့အခ်ိန္က သမၼတသက္တမ္း ႏွစ္ရက္တည္းသာ ရွိေသးတဲ့၊ သားသတ္သမားလို႔ နာမည္ႀကီးေနတဲ့ သမၼတသစ္ ဦးစိန္လြင္ကို ဆန္႔က်င္တဲ့ အေနနဲ႔၊ ဘုရားရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ ေပၚမွာပဲ တပါတီ အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ ဆန္႔က်င္ေရး ေက်ာင္းသားထုရဲ႕ ဆႏၵျပေဟာေျပာပြဲ က်င္းပေနခ်ိန္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ေပၚ ႐ုတ္တရက္ ေရာက္လာတဲ့ အဲဒီ လူဆိုးလူရမ္းကား အမူးသမားမ်ားရဲ႕ ေႏွာက္ယွက္မႈေၾကာင့္ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ ေဟာေျပာမႈကုိ နားေထာင္ေနၾကတဲ့ ပရိသတ္အဖို႔ ဆက္လက္နားေထာင္ဖို႔ ခက္ခဲလာခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြက ဒီလိုမလုပ္ဖို႔ လိုက္လံေျပာဆိုတဲ့အခါ ေက်ာင္းသား မ်ားကို ရန္လုပ္ဆဲဆိုၾကပါတယ္။
ေက်ာင္းသားေတြဟာ ခ်က္ခ်င္းဆိုသလိုပဲ သေဘာေပါက္နားလည္လာရၿပီး လူရမ္းကား လူဆိုးလူမိုက္မ်ားနဲ႔ အခ်င္းမပြားေတာ့ဘဲ ေဟာေျပာပြဲကို ရပ္ဆိုင္းလိုက္ရပါတယ္။ ဘုရားေစာင္းတန္းေတြေပၚက နည္းေပါင္းစံုနဲ႔ ျပန္ဆင္းၾကရပါတယ္။ ေလးဘက္ေလးတန္ ပိတ္ဆို႔ေစာင့္ၾကပ္ေနၾကတဲ့ လံုၿခံဳေရးတပ္ေတြ မသိေအာင္ နီးစပ္ရာ ဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ား၊ အိမ္မ်ားထဲကတဆင့္ ပုန္းလွ်ိဳး၀င္ေရာက္ ထြက္ေျပးၾကရပါေတာ့တယ္။
အဲဒီေန႔ညမွာပဲ ေရႊတိဂံုေစတီေတာ္ေပၚက အဲဒီအျဖစ္အပ်က္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အစိုးရရဲ႕ သတင္းထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္ကို အစိုးရပိုင္ ေရဒီယုိက ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာ အသံလႊင့္ပါတယ္။ ေရႊတိဂံုဘုရားေပၚမွာ ဘုရားဖူးျပည္သူေတြကို အေႏွာက္ အယွက္ေပးၿပီး ဘုရားပိုင္ အလႉခံရေငြေတြကို လုယက္တဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားဆိုးမ်ားကို ေဂါပကအဖြဲ႔ရဲ႕ တိုင္တန္းခ်က္အရ လံုၿခံဳေရးတပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ားက ရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ေပၚတက္ၿပီး ရွင္းလင္းခဲ့ရေၾကာင္း အသံလႊင့္ခ်က္ကို တတိုင္းျပည္လံုးက ၾကားၾကရ ပါေတာ့တယ္။

(ခ)
အထက္ပါ (က) အပိုဒ္မွာ ပါရွိတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းအရာေတြကေတာ့ ‘ေအာင္ဒင္’ ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္ထဲက စာပိုဒ္တခ်ိဳ႕ကုိ က်ေနာ္နားလည္ထားသလို အက်ဥ္းခ်ဳပ္ၿပီး ျပန္ေရးျပလိုက္တာပါ(စာ- ၁၃၄ )။
စာေရးသူ (ကို) ေအာင္ဒင္ဟာ အဲဒီ ေရႊတိဂံုဘုရား ရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ေပၚက လူဆိုးလူမိုက္မ်ားနဲ႔ အခ်င္းမမ်ား ရေလေအာင္ ေဟာေျပာပြဲကုိ ရပ္ဆိုင္းၿပီး ဘုရားရင္ျပင္ေတာ္ ေပၚက လွ်ိဳ႕၀ွက္စြာ ထြက္ေျပးခဲ့ရတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား ထဲက အသက္ ၂၀ ေက်ာ္ စက္မႈတကၠသိုလ္ ေက်ာင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တဦးပဲ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူဟာ ေနာင္အခါ ‘ဗမာျပည္ ျပည္သူ႔ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး လူငယ့္တပ္ဦး’ ရဲ႕ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တဦး ျဖစ္လာပါတယ္။

အထက္ပါ အေၾကာင္းအရာေတြကို ‘ေအာင္ဒင္’က သူ႔ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္မွာ ထည့္ေရးခဲ့တာပါ။ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ’ ၍ စာအုပ္ဟာ စာေရးသူ ေအာင္ဒင္ ျဖတ္သန္းက်င္လည္ ပါ၀င္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး လႈပ္ရွားမႈ မ်ားကို ျပန္လည္စုစည္း ေဖၚျပထားတဲ့ စာအုပ္ပါပဲ။  တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ေျပာရရင္ ျမန္မာျပည္ရဲ႕ ရာဇ၀င္သမိုင္းမွာ ျပင္သစ္ျပည္က ၁၈၇၁ ႏွစ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးႀကီးလို အင္မတန္ ႀကီးမားျမင့္မားလွတဲ့ လူထုအံုၾကြမႈႀကီး ျဖစ္တဲ့ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္၊ ရွစ္ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုႀကီး မျဖစ္ပြားမီနဲ႔ ျဖစ္ပြားၿပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္း ၁၉၈၉ ခု ႏွစ္လည္ပိုင္းအထိ အခ်ိန္ ကာလအတြင္း သူ႔ရဲ႕ (စက္မႈတကၠသိုလ္ေက်ာင္းသား တဦးရဲ႕) ႏိုင္ငံေရး လႈပ္ရွားေဆာင္ရြက္မႈမ်ားကိုု မွတ္တမ္းတင္တဲ့ သေဘာ ေရးသားထားတာပါပဲ။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ေျပာရရင္ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္ဟာ ‘ေအာင္ဒင္’ ရဲ႕ အထုပၸတၱိတပိုင္း စာအုပ္ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔လည္း ေျပာႏိုင္ပါတယ္။

႐ုရွစာေရးဆရာ ‘အီလ်ာအာရင္ဘတ္’ သည္လည္းပဲ သူျဖတ္သန္း က်င္လည္ရတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကာလ တခုအေၾကာင္း မွတ္တမ္းသေဘာ ေရးခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ ‘လူမ်ား၊ သကၠရာဇ္မ်ား ဘ၀မ်ား’ စာအုပ္မွာ ေရးခဲ့တာပါ။ ဒီစာအုပ္ထဲမွာ သူ႔ကိုယ္သူ ဗဟိုျပဳၿပီး ေရးတယ္ဆိုေပမယ့္ သူနဲ႔ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္၊ သူနဲ႔ စာေရးေဖာ္စာေရးဖက္ တျခား စာေရးဆရာ၊ ကဗ်ာဆရာမ်ား အေၾကာင္း ကိုလည္း မွတ္တမ္းသေဘာ ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ေအာင္ဒင္သည္လည္းပဲ သူ႔ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ’ ၍ စာအုပ္ထဲမွာ သူ႔ကိုယ္သူ ပင္တိုင္ထား ေရးတယ္ လို႔ စာေရးသူက ၀န္ခံထားေသာ္ျငားလည္းပဲ သူနဲ႔ ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္ သူနဲ႔ အတူ သူလိုပဲ ႏိုင္ငံေရး လႈပ္ရွားတက္ၾကြသူ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား၊ ေက်ာင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ကိုလည္း မွတ္တမ္းတင္ဖို႔ မပ်က္ကြက္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္မို႔လည္း ဒီစာအုပ္ဟာ ရွစ္ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုႀကီးနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ေလာေလာဆယ္မွာျဖင့္ အျပည့္စံုဆံုး စာအုပ္အျဖစ္ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳရမလို ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍” စာအုပ္အလိုအရ ဆိုရင္ ရွစ္ေလးလံုး အေရးေတာ္ပံုႀကီး မတိုင္ခင္နဲ႔ စစ္တပ္က အာဏာသိမ္းၿပီး စ အခ်ိန္ေတြမွာ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြဟာ အုတ္နံရံႀကီးကို အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ ေခါင္းနဲ႔ ေျပးေဆာင့္ခဲ့ၾကတယ္၊ မိုးကို ဒူးနဲ႔ တိုက္ခဲ့ၾက တယ္။ သူတို႔ကို နားလည္ဖို႔ ဆိုရင္ စာဖတ္သူေတြဟာ သူတို႔ ေျပာတာေတြ၊ သူတို႔ ေလွ်ာက္လွမ္း သြားေနပုံေတြနဲ႔ သူတို႔ခင္းလို႔ ေပၚေပါက္လာတဲ့ လမ္းအသြယ္သြယ္ကို ၾကည့္ၿပီး ျမင္ၿပီး မွသာ နားလည္ႏိုင္မွာပါ။ နားလည္ဖို႔ မလြယ္ကူသလို နားလည္ဖို႔ လြယ္ကူ ေနတာလည္း ရွိပါတယ္။ ကမၻာ့ သမိုင္းမွာ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ၊ လူေတြက ေခါင္းနဲ႔ေဆာင့္လို႔ ၿပိဳက်သြားရတဲ့ အာဏာရွင္ ေခတ္သမိုင္းေတြဆိုတာ အထင္အရွား ရွိခဲ့တာပဲ။
‘ေအာင္ဒင္’ ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍” စာအုပ္မွာ ႏိုင္ငံ့အေရးထဲ တစတစ ပါ၀င္စူးနစ္လာၾကတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို အခုအခ်ိန္ လိုပဲ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားေတြက အသံုးခ်လို႔၊ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့ အေျခအေနကို ဖ်က္လိုဖ်က္ဆီး လုပ္ခ်င္လို႔၊ ပညာေကာင္းေကာင္း မသင္ခ်င္လို႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးထဲ ပါ၀င္လာၾကတာ ျဖစ္တယ္ လို႔ ဟုိအရင္ကတည္းက အေျပာအဆို ခံခဲ့ၾကရပါလား ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ေတြကိုလည္း သြားေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။

သင္ခန္းစာ ယူၾကရမယ့္ အခ်က္ေတြကလည္း ဒုနဲ႔ေဒး ပါပဲ။ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ကြဲၾကၿပဲၾက၊ အျပန္အလွန္ စြပ္စြဲ ေျပာဆိုၾက၊ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ႏိုင္မယ့္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြကို အပူတျပင္း လိုက္ရွာၾက၊ ဒီၾကားထဲ အာဏာရွင္ေတြက ရို္က္ႏွက္ သတ္ျဖတ္ ဖမ္းဆီးေထာင္ခ်တဲ့ အလုပ္ကို တဖက္က လုပ္ၿပီး တဖက္ကလည္း ေက်ာင္းသားထု အတြင္း ေသြးကဲြသြား ေစဖို႔၊ လူမိုက္လူရမ္းကား ေတြနဲ႔ ရင္ဆိုင္ ၿဖိဳခြင္းတာမ်ိဳး၊ လူထုအခ်င္းခ်င္း ရန္တိုက္ေပးတာမ်ိဳး အျပင္ ေက်ာင္းသား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တဦးခ်င္းစီရဲ႕ ကိုယ္ေရးကုိယ္တာေတြကို ေဖာ္ထုတ္၀ါဒျဖန္႔ သိကၡာခ်တဲ့ နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုကိုလည္း အသံုးျပဳ ခဲ့ၾကတာေတြဟာ အခုေခတ္လိုပဲ ဟိုးအရင္ကတည္းက ရွိေနခဲ့တာပါလား ဆိုတာ ဒီစာအုပ္မွာ သြားေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။
လူေတြကလည္း ေက်ာင္းသားေတြအေပၚ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးေသာ ႏွလံုးသားဓာတ္ခံအေပၚမူတည္ၿပီး အခုေခတ္လိုပဲ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ျမင္ခဲ့ၾက၊ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ေျပာခဲ့ၾကတာပါပဲ။ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြဟာ ဘယ္လိုမွ မေအာင္ျမင္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အလုပ္ကို မသိသား ဆိုးရြားစြာ လုပ္ၾကတယ္၊ ေက်ာက္တံုးကို အပ္နဲ႔ ထိုးေဖာက္သလို ျဖစ္ေနတယ္၊ ထင္ေပၚ ေက်ာ္ၾကားခ်င္ၾကတယ္၊ လက္ခုပ္သံေတြကို သာယာခဲ့ၾကတယ္၊ တခ်ိဳ႕ဆိုရင္ အမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဆိုတာမ်ိဳးအထိ စိတ္ကူးယဥ္ၾကတယ္ အစ ရွိသျဖင့္ အေျပာခံခဲ့ ေ၀ဖန္ခံခဲ့ၾကရတဲ့ အျဖစ္ဟာလည္း အခု မ်က္ေမွာက္ေခတ္ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ အျဖစ္နဲ႔ တေထရာတည္း ပါပဲ။

အာဏာရွင္ေတြဟာ သူတို႔ကို ဆန္႔က်င္တဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို ဘယ္တုန္းကမွ ရင္၀ယ္သားလို သေဘာထား ေျဖရွင္း ၾကတာ မေတြ႔ရတဲ့ အျဖစ္ကိုလည္း ဒီစာအုပ္ထဲမွာ ေတြ႔ၾကရပါတယ္။ အခု မေန႔တေန႔ကပဲ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို နံပါတ္တုတ္နဲ႔ သဲႀကီးမဲႀကီး ၀ိုင္း႐ုိ္က္ၾက၊ ေက်ာင္းသား သမဂၢအလံကို အၿငိဳးတႀကီးနဲ႔ ေျမႀကီးေပၚခ်နင္းၿပီး ေဒါသ ထြက္ေနတဲ့ ရဲေတြလိုပဲ ရွစ္ေလးလံုး ကာလအတြင္းက အင္းလ်ားကန္ေဘာင္ တေနရာမွာ ေျပးစရာ မရွိလို႔ ေရထဲဆင္းေျပးရတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသူေတြကို ဆံပင္ဆြဲၿပီး ေရထဲႏွစ္ ႐ိုက္ႏွက္ၾကတဲ့ လံုထိန္းေတြ ဆုိတာ ဟိုအရင္ ကတည္းက ရွိခဲ့တာပဲ။

ေက်ာင္းသားသမိုင္းမွာ ဗိုလ္ေအာင္ေက်ာ္မွရယ္လို႔ နံပါတ္တုတ္နဲ႔ ႐ိုက္သတ္ခံခဲ့ရတာ မဟုတ္ပါလား ဆိုတာ ‘ေအာင္ဒင္’ ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္မွာ ေတြ႔ၾကရမွာပါ။ အသက္ ၂၀ ေက်ာ္ ကိုေအာင္ဆန္းလို လူငယ္ေတြ ႏိုင္ငံေရးထဲ ပါ၀င္လာၾကၿပီး ေျမေပၚေျမေအာက္ လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြကို အလုပ္လုပ္ရင္းသင္ သင္ၾကားရင္းအလုပ္လုပ္နဲ႔ လူငယ္ ဘ၀ေတြကုိ စေတးသြားၾကရတဲ့ အျဖစ္ေတြဟာ ခုေခတ္မွရယ္လို႔ မဟုတ္ပါလားဆိုတာ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍ ’ စာအုပ္မွာ အထင္းသား ေတြ႔ၾကရပါတယ္။
တေနရာမွာေတာ့ တိုင္းျပည္ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး အတြက္ အင္မတန္ အႏၲရာယ္ႀကီးၿပီး ၾကမ္းတမ္းလွတဲ့ လမ္းေၾကာင္းေပၚ ေလွ်ာက္ေနရေပမယ့္ ခ်စ္သူကို လြမ္းတမိတဲ့ ညကေလး တညအေၾကာင္း ထည့္ေရးလိုက္ေတာ့ ဂ်ာမာန္ကဗ်ာဆရာ ‘ဗားေတာ့ဗရက္’ ရဲ႕ ကဗ်ာစာသားေလးကို သြားၿပီးသတိရေစ ပါေသးတယ္။ ဗားေတာ့ဗရက္က ‘ခ်စ္သူကို တ၀က္ တပ်က္သာ ခ်စ္ရတဲ့ ေခတ္ပါလား’ လို႔ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ေအာင္ဒင္ဟာလည္းပဲ သူ႔ရဲ႕ ‘ႏွင္းထုထဲက အလြမ္းည’ ေခါင္းစဥ္ ေအာက္က စာပိုဒ္ေတြထဲမွာ မင္းကိုႏိုင္နဲ႔ အတူတြဲၿပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ၿခံ၀င္းထဲက အင္းလ်ားကန္ေဘာင္မွာ ဂစ္တာတလက္နဲ႔ ‘ခင္၀မ္း’ ရဲ႕ ‘ႏွင္း’ သီခ်င္းကို ေအာ္ဟစ္ငိုေၾကြး သီဆိုရင္း ခ်စ္သူကို တ၀က္တပ်က္သာ ခ်စ္ခြင့္ႀကံဳ ၾကရတဲ့ သူ႔တို႔ဘ၀ကို သူတို႔ကိုယ္တိုင္ ျပန္လြမ္းမိၾကတဲ့အေၾကာင္း ထည့္ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္(စာ-၃၃၀၊ ႏွင္းထုထဲက အလြမ္းည)။
သူက ဒီလိုေရးလုိက္တဲ့အခါ ပဲခူး႐ိုးမ တေနရာမွာ ဖက္ဆစ္ဂ်ပန္ေတြကို ေတာ္လွန္တိုက္ထုတ္ဖို႔ လုပ္ေနတဲ့ လူငယ္တဦးသာ ျဖစ္သူ ‘ကိုဗဟိန္း’ က သူ႔ခ်စ္သူဆီ လေရာင္ေအာက္မွာပဲ စာထိုင္ၿပီး ေရးခဲ့ဖူးတယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းကိုလည္း သြားၿပီး သတိရလိုက္မိပါေသးတယ္။

ေအာင္ဒင္ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္မွာ ျပန္လည္ ျငင္းခုန္ ေဆြေႏြးစရာကိစၥမ်ား မရွိမဟုတ္၊ ရွိေတာ့ ရွိပါတယ္။ ဥပမာ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း ဦးႏုက စင္ၿပိဳင္အစိုးရ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေၾကာင္း ေၾကညာတာကို အဲဒီအခ်ိန္က လူေတြ ႏိုင္ငံေရး သမားေတြနဲ႔ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြက ဘာ့ေၾကာင့္ မေထာက္ခံခဲ့ၾကတာလဲ ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ (စာ- ၂၁၃) နဲ႔၊ ေဒါက္တာ ေမာင္ေမာင္ရဲ႕ ကမ္းလွမ္းခ်က္ကို လက္မခံႏိုင္ခဲ့ၾကလို႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ အေျပာင္းအလဲ ျဖစ္ေရး အခြင့္အေရး တခုကို လက္လႊတ္ ခဲ့ရျပန္တယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ (စာ- ၃၉၄) မ်ားကေတာ့ ျပန္လည္ေဆြးေႏြး ျငင္းခုန္ရမယ့္ အခ်က္မ်ား ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒါေတြက ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္မွာ အဓိက မက်ပါဘူး။ အဓိက က်တဲ့ အခ်က္က အဲဒီေခတ္ကာလ ႀကီး တနံတလ်ား အတြင္း ေက်ာင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ စြန္႔စား စြန္႔လႊတ္ ေပးဆပ္ခဲ့ၾကရတဲ့ အာဏာရွင္ဆန္႔က်င္ေရး သမိုင္းႀကီးကို မီးေမာင္း ထိုးျပလိုက္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အခ်က္သာ အဓိက ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
(ဂ)
တပိုင္းတစ ကိုယ္ေရး အထုပၸတၱိ ဆန္ဆန္ ေရးတဲ့ စာအုပ္ေတြ မၾကာခဏ ဖတ္ၾကရပါတယ္။ ဒီအထဲမွာမွ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ စိုး၀င္းရဲ႕ စာအုပ္မ်ိဳး၊ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ထြန္းၾကည္ရဲ႕ စာအုပ္မ်ိဳးေတြကို ေလ့လာဖတ္သင့္ပါတယ္။ သူတို႔ အထုပၸတၱိ စာအုပ္ေတြထဲက ယူသင့္တာယူၿပီး ပယ္သင့္တာ ပယ္ၾကရမွာေတြလည္း မလဲြမေသြ ေတြ႔ရမွာပါပဲ။

ဒီေနရာမွာ ျဖည့္စြက္ၿပီးေျပာရမယ္ဆိုရင္ ‘ေအာင္ဒင္ ’ ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္ကိုလည္း လက္ရွိ တိုင္းျပည္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရၿပီး ျပႆနာမ်ားနဲ႔ နပမ္းလံုးေနၾကရသူမ်ား အားလံုးကို ဖတ္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ပညာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ ေတာင္းဆိုေန ၾကရတဲ့၊ ၾကမ္းတမ္းခက္ထန္လွတဲ့ ဘ၀ေတြ ျဖတ္သန္းေက်ာ္လႊားေနၾကရတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြနဲ႔ ေက်ာင္းသား မိဘမ်ားသည္လည္း ဖတ္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ အခုတေလာ ေက်ာင္းသား လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြ အေပၚ အျပစ္ျမင္လို႔ ပဲ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ အေကာင္းျမင္လို႔ပဲ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ ဘယ္သူမဆို ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ေျပာဆိုေနၾကသူ အားလံုးလည္းပဲ မပ်က္မကြက္ ဖတ္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။

ကဗ်ာဆရာ ‘ေမာင္ေအာင္ပြင့္’ ရဲ႕ ‘ငါး႐ိုးနင္တဲ့ ေငြလမင္း’ ကဗ်ာေခါင္းစဥ္ လိုပါပဲ။ ‘ေအာင္ဒင္’ ရဲ႕ ‘ေႏြတညမွ အစျပဳ၍’ စာအုပ္ကို ဖတ္ရႈၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ ေဟာဒီ မ်က္ေမွာက္ေခတ္ တေခတ္ကို ‘ငါး႐ိုးနင္ေနတဲ့ ေခတ္ႀကီး တေခတ္’ သာ ျဖစ္တယ္ လို႔ပဲ အမည္တပ္ၿပီး ေၾကကြဲလိုက္ပါရေစ။     ။

Testimony before House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific

U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific

Hearing on Burma: “Oversight of U.S. Policy Towards Burma”

April 25, 2015; 2:00 PM, Rayburn House Office Building Room 2200

Testimony of Aung Din
Executive Director, U.S. Campaign for Burma

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Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Subcommittee,

Thank you very much for holding this hearing today. I am grateful to be here to testify about the current situation in Burma, the country in Southeast Asia where I was born and raised. Before I start, on behalf of the people of Burma, I would like to take this opportunity to state my appreciation for the United States Congress’s strong interest and consistent support for our struggle for democracy, human rights and national reconciliation.

The historic by-elections in Burma were held on April 1, 2012. Democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won 43 seats out the 44 they had contested. The ruling party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), won only one seat. Despite threats, violence, vote buying and other fraudulent acts made by the authorities, the people of Burma again courageously expressed their strong desire to be free from authoritarian rule by voting for the NLD, just as they did in the 1990 elections.  The results of the NLD’s 1990 landslide victory were nullified by the military junta.

The Burmese regime may believe that allowing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD to hold nearly 7% of the seats in Parliament will not constitute a major threat to their hold on power, as USDP and the military still control 80% of the seats in Parliament and the military still has veto power to kill any proposed legal changes. Furthermore, for this concession, what they have achieved from the by-elections is enormous. The international community recognizes their political system as all party-inclusive and legitimate. Many international leaders see them as true reformers. The pressure and sanctions imposed by the United States, Australia, Canada and the European Union are being significantly eased or suspended. The Japanese government has announced it will write off 3.7 billion dollars in debt and plans to resume development assistance. Engagement and appeasement will flourish further. More investment and more tourists, as well as more development assistance will flow in. The generals and their cronies who still control the country may be able to do shopping and send their children to schools in the United States and Europe soon. Actually, in my opinion, the Burmese government led by President U Thein Sein is the real winner of the by-elections.

Sadly, this election effectively eradicates the long standing objective and expectation of Burma’s democracy forces and ethnic nationalities – the realization of a meaningful and time-bound political dialogue between the military, democracy forces led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and ethnic representatives that would lead to real democratization and sustainable national reconciliation. The NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are now entering into a new playing field with the determination to expand their political base in the Parliament and organize changes within the military controlled political system. 

The NLD has promised that it will work on three major issues in the Parliament: (1) rule of law, (2) internal peace, and (3) amendments to the 2008 Constitution. Rule of law is of vital importance as unfair laws and decrees, designed to arrest and imprison anyone who holds different opinions are still in place. The judiciary system is still an instrument of the regime’s oppressive rule. Corrupt judges run the courts without due process and make rulings as instructed by their superiors or in favor of those who pay them most. Law enforcement officials are brutal and dangerous, and arbitrary detention and torture are their only tools to get confessions they want from the accused.

Internal peace must also be a central concern. Current peace talks between ethnic armed groups and the regime will not lead to the permanent ending of civil war, without granting ethnic rights, such as a certain degree of autonomy, self-determination, proper sharing of revenue generated from natural resources located in ethnic areas which represents 60% of the country’s total area, as well as a complete end to human rights violations in ethnic areas committed by the Burmese military. Even now, severe fighting between the Burmese army and ethnic armed groups are going on in Shan and Kachin States having forced hundreds of thousands of ethnic people to flee from their homes and villages.

Amending the undemocratic 2008 Constitution is the single most important issue. This constitution grants supreme power to the military’s Commander-in-Chief, who can run the military as he deems fit. The military is independent from all administrative, legislative and judiciary authority; yet can also interfere in all branches of the government. It holds 25% of the seats in each parliament and three significant security ministries in the government, and ensures civilian judges have no jurisdiction over armed forces. Moreover, the Commander-in-Chief can assume all powers, dismiss the government and rule the country in the name of a state of emergency. If Burma hopes to move toward a genuine democratic government, civilian oversight of the military and removal of the military’s authority over the government are imperative.

All three major campaign issues promised by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi need constitutional amendments and additional changes to laws in order to be fulfilled. She will enter into the new playing field with good faith that she can work with President U Thein Sein, Parliament Speakers U Shwe Mann and U Khin Aung Myint, and Military Commander-in-Chief General Min Aung Hlaing, to make the country prosperous and democratic. However General Min Aung Hlaing confirmed to his troops recently that the major task of the military is to protect the constitution, signaling that he will not allow any reduction in his power. Former Major General Htay Oo, who is the General Secretary of the USDP, also recently said that the Constitution is perfect and there is nothing to amend it, including the leading role of the military in politics.

The constitution was purposefully crafted to be difficult to amend. At least 20% of lawmakers have to submit the Bill to amend the Constitution to the Union Parliament, a Joint Session of the Lower and Upper Houses, and the amendment can only be approved by a vote of more than seventy-five percent of all the representatives of the Union Parliament. This effectively gives a veto power to the military with its 25% of seats in the Parliament. Even if all 75 percent of the elected representatives stand together for the amendment, they can’t win if they can’t get even one vote from the military bloc.

The by-election is just the beginning of new challenges for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD. There is the risk, of course, that she may be contained, confined and co-opted in the regime’s political system without achieving anything. Or, she may be able to crack the door wider and recruit more and more members of the USDP and the military to join in the alliance of the agents of reform. There are so many uncertainties lying ahead. The current stand-off between the ruling party and the NLD over the language of the Parliamentary oath has made the NLD and DASSK unable to attend parliament yet, which resumed on April 23^rd. We can see from this stand point the magnitude and depth of obstacles that DASSK will face. But, governments around the world are rushing to reward the regime with the excuse of encouraging the reformers.

On April 4, 2012, just three days after the by-election, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the U.S. response to the outcome of the by-elections: the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will establish an official presence in Burma; restrictions imposed upon the UNDP will be lifted; and an U.S. Ambassador to Burma will be nominated. In addition, selected Burmese officials and parliamentarians will be invited to the United States, and private organizations from the U.S. will be allowed to operate in Burma in the non-profit sector. In addition two major financial sanctions, the bans on investment and financial services, will be eased for selected targets. These steps are undoubtedly being well received by the generals in Burma, who are still engaged in killing innocent civilians in ethnic areas and keeping hundreds of political prisoners behind bars and have not relinquished any of their power. The generous awards from the United States and the more generous awards from the European Union are a major victory for the Burmese regime, which holds the policy of “give little, cheat more, and gain much” to encourage the U.S. and EU policy of engagement.

To be sure, there have been significant changes in Burma over the past six months, but it would be a mistake to assume that they are irreversible or that all things are pointing in a positive direction. Responding to positive changes is one thing; racing to provide rewards may be regrettable.

I support the measures announced by Secretary Clinton, except the targeted easing of bans on investment and financial services. I strongly believe that this is too much and too fast. I asked my colleagues inside Burma, including NLD leaders, ethnic leaders, the 88 Generation Student leaders and some economists. They all said that they were not consulted by any U.S. officials and they do not think this is the time to ease these important sanctions. They are afraid that these measures will lead to another targeted easing or permanent lifting of import restrictions, which will have to be renewed by Congress before the end of July. They also believe such easing of sanctions will only help cronies and families of authorities as they have power, resources, connections, and institutions to profit from the easing of sanctions. We can see some economic reform on the surface. But, actual practice of doing business in Burma remains unchanged, totally controlled by the regime and its allied cronies.

In addition, the premature lifting of financial sanctions can greatly jeopardize the fragile peace negotiations currently underway between the regime’s civilian authorities and ethnic nationality groups.  The majority of Burma’s ethnic nationalities populations believe the regime is engaging in these negotiations to win economic concessions from the ethnic armed groups.  If the international community rewards the regime with economic gains, critical leverage is lost to ensure national political reconciliation and peace is achieved.   

I agree that the U.S. should respond to the positive developments in Burma with positive measures. However, such responses by the U.S. should be carefully calibrated. Having over 40 seats in the Parliament through the by-election is just a start for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Two days before the by-elections, when a journalist asked her how she would rate the current state of changes towards democracy in Burma on a scale of one to ten, she said we are “on the way to 1.” She knows clearly that there is still a long way to go.

I am sure she will aim to win the majority of seats in the general election in 2015. The sanctions we have are leverage for her, Burma’s democracy movement, and ethnic nationalities, a kind of the money in the bank. We need to use it carefully, so it will last until we achieve major results. However, the Obama administration is now in the process of implementation of easing of major financial sanctions. That’s why I would like to make the following recommendations and request Congress to balance the fast track action of the administration.

(1)   Before the removal of any financial sanctions takes place, the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals) list on Burma, managed by Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), MUST be updated to include more cronies and hardliners. It has been almost three years since the list has been updated.  Many cronies, who are sanctioned by the EU and Australia, are still not included in the U.S. SDN list. This list should be a must-check reference for U.S. companies that will do business in Burma.

(2)   The process of selecting targets to be eased for investment and financial services should take sufficient time and should be made through broader consultation with the human rights community in the United Stated and key stakeholders inside Burma, especially ethnic nationalities. 

(3)   The implementation of targeted easing of bans on investment and financial services should wait until we see clearly how NLD MPs and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are treated by the USDP and the military in the Parliament and an end to attacks against the Kachin.

(4)   Binding requirements or a compulsory framework for responsible business conduct should be imposed for any U.S. business that will invest in Burma. Elements from OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises, Conflict Minerals Provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Tibet Policy Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, can be drawn to create such framework.

(5)   U.S. must pressure the Burmese regime to allow former political prisoners to obtain passports, so they can make trips abroad, in response to the U.S. easing of visa restrictions on Burmese officials.

(6)   U.S. must pressure the Burmese regime to allow members of Burmese civil society to form and operate non-profit organizations freely, in response to the U.S. granting permission to U.S. organizations to support non-profit sectors in Burma.

(7)   U.S. must pressure the Burmese regime to release all remaining political prisoners unconditionally, lift all restrictions imposed upon all former political prisoners, and allow former political prisoners to go back to schools or resume their professions in legal representation, medical practice, teaching, etc.

(8)   As the U.S. plans to establish an official USAID presence in Burma and support the UNDP country program, the U.S. must pressure the regime to allow international organizations to have unhindered access to areas affected by natural disasters and armed conflict.

(9)   U.S. must remind and keep reminding the Burmese regime that their full cooperation with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and democratic MPs in the Parliament and achieving negotiated political settlement with ethnic nationalities through a meaningful political dialogue outside the Parliament are the sole factors to justify fully lifting of all sanctions.

(10)                       U.S. Congress must renew import restrictions from Burma.

Lastly, I would like to highlight the assumption of reformers vs. hardliners within the Burmese regime. Many international players believe that they have to encourage so-called reformers by lifting sanctions and pressure, and so reformers will be encouraged and hardliners will be undermined. There is a possibility that the positive responses being made by the international community may become irreversible while the changes in the country are not irreversible yet. This is a very tricky issue. Encouraging the so-call reformers in the regime should not undermine democracy activists, ethnic nationalities, and human rights defenders, the true agents of change in Burma.

Thank You.

Aung Din
aungdin@uscampaignforburma.org

Oral Presentation before House Subcommittee, June 22, 2011

U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific

Hearing on Burma:
“Piercing Burma’s Veil of Secrecy: The Truth Behind the Sham Election and the Difficult Road Ahead”
June 22, 2011
12:30 PM, Rayburn House Office Building Room 2172

Testimony of Aung Din
Executive Director, U.S. Campaign for Burma

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UNCHANGED BURMA

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Faleomavaega and Members of the Subcommittee,

Thank you very much for holding this hearing today. I have submitted my prepared testimony for the record. I also would like to submit the resolution on Burma adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2011, which Daw Aung San Suu Kyi made reference to in her message, for the record. And here, I would like to raise one important issue that is bothering me too much.

For many years, the international community has tried to stop human rights violations in Burma, perpetrated by the military regime. The United States, EU, Australia, and Canada have employed economic sanctions on the regime as forms of pressure for positive change. Many years have passed and they began to doubt that imposing sanctions and pressure alone is not enough, and therefore they started to engage with the regime directly. I support the United States policy of engaging with the regime while maintaining sanctions. But, as I have reminded from the beginning, engagement should have a time frame, clear benchmarks and it should involve an appropriate measure to respond for any development. However, as of today, the existing sanctions are still not fully implemented yet, the engagement remains open ended, and I don’t see any effort by the U.S. government to exercise the pressure in a more effective and well-coordinated way.

The regime knows very well how to manipulate the current form of engagement.

From the beginning, the regime took the upper hand by withholding the issuance of the visas. They will not reject applications for visas flatly. They will make some excuses such as “Oh, our leaders are now very busy and they may not be able to host you appropriately. Please try again later.” Those diplomats who are eager to visit Burma have no choice but to wait for indefinite period or find someone who is close to the regime for help. While waiting for the visa, they will try to refrain from criticizing the regime publicly. This can be called “Visa Blackmail”.

After delaying weeks or months, the regime issues visas for the diplomats. Then the regime will try to control their schedule. The visas will only allow for a two or three day stay in the country and the regime will make them to spend most of the time at their Capital, Nay Pyi Taw, for meetings with several officials. The diplomats will not have much time left to see the opposition leaders. This can be called “Schedule Control”.

The next and important steps of the regime are making “Hollow Promises” and selling the story of “Reformers Vs Hardliners”. In most of the meetings with the regime leaders, the diplomats will not have much chance to raise their concerns - rather, they must listen to long and often needless lectures from them. At the end of the meeting, the regime will make some promises, such as “we are planning to release some prisoners” or “we will consider to allow the ICRC to visit prisons”, etc. Then, the diplomats will meet some officials who will actually listen to them. The diplomats will be amazed by the good command of the English language these officials possess. Then they will be amazed more as the regime’s officials hardly argue or deny the complaints they make about the human rights situation. They will be told by the officials, “we know there is something wrong in our country, we want to fix it and we want to make changes, but there are hard liners within and above our ranks”. Then they will tell the diplomats to give them time. It might sound like this, “You know you need to understand us and give us some time. Don’t put so much pressure on us. If you continue to do so, we cannot convince the hard liners to make the change. And don’t forget your Aung San Suu Kyi is also very stubborn, a hard liner herself.”

Many diplomats have bought such story right away. They heard some promises from the regime’s leaders. They found some reform-minded persons within the murderous regime. They were very much encouraged. That’s why when they came back from Burma and reported to the respective government and organization, their message is “We need to give them some time to implement what they have promised and for reformers to be able to convince the hardliners to do positive things.” They also claim that “This is not the right time to impose more pressure”.

These four steps, “Visa Blackmail”, “Schedule Control”, “Making Hollow Promises” and “Selling the story of Reformers Vs Hardliners”, have worked very well for the regime over the years. They have been successful in diluting and confusing the international diplomats by responding to their engagement with such a tactic. Unfortunately, and unintentionally, the international community has made the regime stronger and the democratic opposition weaker by legitimizing the regime, waiting for hollow promises, and doing nothing while waiting. Now, expectations are high again among the diplomats that some elements in the so-called new government are reform-minded, that they deserve to be given time and that putting more pressure on the regime now is not a good idea. For these diplomats, there will never be “a right time” to impose more pressure on the regime.

Mr. Chairman,

Please help us to end the “Open-ended Engagement Policy” and “This is not the Right Time Attitude”. The world has given the regime plenty of time. Now is the time to support and strengthen the democracy movement by weakening the regime stronger and harsher.

Thank You.