coming to myanmar is for me a profoundly personal journey into my own family history, my father was born here, and carved out a successful career as a doctor until the military siezed control in 1962 targeted by the state for being an indian national, he wasforced to abandon his home and flee overseas as part of a mass exodus of an estimated 300,000 ethnic indians. modern day myanmar is still racked by ethnic divisions, but life here is transforming. one of the biggest changes is in free speech. tonight a live comedy show is being broadcast to the nation to mark international peace day. the organiser is zarganer. myanmar's most famous comedian, and a former political prisoner. zarganar, what does tonight symbolise?
we can say this is the first time in the history of our country that everybody can watch and every comedian can speak theirjokes freely. there is no censor, no ban. over the 35 numbers of the ministers willcome to here, and sit there and they can listen how they criticise them, the comedians. former major general aung min is a governmentminister and a key peace negotiator. he is taking up zarganar's invitation to hear thecomedians barbs first hand. but the opening act begins with an unexpectedly serious message. i'd like to criticise the military offensives.we really....we really pity the suffering of the victims, our fellow citizens. pleasestop the military offensives. please be united,
our fellow ethnic nationalities. the jokes that follow take aim at the government'seconomic mismanagement, the soaring price of living and widespread corruption. in hell, the electricity meter is stuffeddown the officials' throats!â even though they happily chew on them! they are very happy even though they are inhell! the humour may seem mild but this is a country where until recently comedians had to submittheir gags to government censors. tonight even the minister is laughing along.
what have you witnessed as far as the paceof change in myanmar? things have definitely quickened up immensely.it wasn't so long ago that people were riding around with push bikes. few australians are watching the transitionto democracy as avidly as ross dunkley, the country's only foreign media magnate. people are enjoying their first taste ofdemocracy in half a century. he arrived here 13 years ago, building a uniqueand sometimes testy relationship with the generals to set up the nation's first independentweekly newspaper. a lot of people were critical about the'myanmar times', that we were lackeys of the
junta that we were prostitutes. we were juston the ground engaging with the military dictatorship. we were of the view that it's better to beon the field and playing than off the field and screaming. like some hysterical housewife.every week we were attempting to lift the bar just a little bit higher. while newspaper readership is collapsing elsewherein the world, in myanmar business is booming. it was only in april this year that the governmentended a state monopoly on the daily press. for the previous five decades it had beenmore interested in censoring, jailing or torturing journalists deemed critical of the state. you know, here in myanmar it's a boomingmedia scene and with the relaxation of censorship
in the last six months we've had 13 dailiesopen up. that's incredible - 13 dailies in six months. here is a selection of the dailies, 'thevoice', 'the yangon times', 'the seven day daily'. the freedom of speech for me has gotto be at the forefront of any change. unless you can have a free and open media, how canyou claim to have any sort of democracy? for me that's the baseline. whose land is it in mikyaung kan? our land!â our land! does the land belong to the military?
no, no. this protest is about one of the most contentiousissues in the new myanmar. land grabbed by the former military rulers. just a few yearsago, a gathering like this would never have been tolerated by the authorities. these peoplehave been fighting for more than 20 years to regain their land in south-east yangon. the army forced all of us to move out at gunpoint.some fearful people moved out but some didn't. the army bulldozed the land and sent themto insein prison. a 1,000 families lost their homes. it's the kind of injustice we hear again and again.
we dared not speak up in the past.â now wedare to because we have been given the right. we think the president and the governmentwill consider our demand favourably.â so we are demanding very bravely. under old laws still in place, demonstratorscan face hefty jail sentences simply for protesting without permission. in this case, the authoritieshad agreed but protestors were being closely watched. around the corner, we found fourtruckloads of police ready to react to any trouble. may the whole country be peaceful! may burmabe peaceful! we are here because we need peace.â alsobecause of the 2008 constitution we have so
many problem and we have so many conflictin our country. for activists like this generation wave leaderko moe thway, political change isn't much easier. last year he led a peace rally withoutgetting permission. he and eight other organisers now face up to 20 years in prison and a gruellingtrial process that's more like a full-time job. how many times have you been to court? i think more than once at a time we havebeen in the court 130 times. 130 times, wow.â how do you view this particulargovernment? i would say that the country has changedthan before but the thing is, we need to wait
and watch carefully where this change is leadingto. so we cannot say everything will be good. one of the key milestones of myanmar's reforms has been the release of hundreds of politicalprisoners. but many remain behind bars, with new arrests and trials still being reportedevery month. i've come to see than maw, a woman who knows only too well how those viewedas troublemakers are treated. her husband ko htin kyaw is a veteran political campaigner. i am really proud of him.â i couldn't havedone it. how does it make you feel when you look at pictures of your husband?
only a few politicians can nurture thatkind of political commitment.â so i am proud of him, not just as a husband, but as a goodcitizen of the country. we don't want crony-ocracy!!! we don't want it!! at a protest three months ago he planned tomake a citizens arrest on a businessman he accused of land grabbing but he ended up incustody himself, charged with insulting the state, he faces two years in jail. the government must solve the problemsthe people are facing, if the government ignores the suffering of the people we cannot callit a democratic government.â it is a crony-ocracy
government that protects the cronies. than maw is three months pregnant and is facedwith bringing up her baby alone. despite them saying the country is changing, we cannot say we see any noticeable changes.â in the past anyone who called for democracy was jailed.â now the government itself callsfor democracy, but it's just rhetoric. i think that this government is about 10 percent betterthan the last government. talky, shell and bobo are former political prisoners, between them they have spent 30years in jail. faced with the difficulties you have life on the outside, they set upgolden harp, a taxi company with a difference.
hi, can i hop in? thanks. there's a deep stigma attached to being apolitical prisoner in today's myanmar. it's hard to find employment or to be acceptedby society. the main objective of golden harp is to help and support the former political prisonersas much as we can. golden harp provides valuable stability for former prisoners. it also gives drivers likeshell a chance to educate their mainly foreign passengers. we share our burmese politics with them andwe highlight the abuses and wrongdoings of
the previous government with constructivecriticism. we are on our way to a place well-known toemployees of golden harp, yangon's sprawling insein prison. notorious for the mental andphysical torture inflicted on its inmates. the most difficult time for me was being alonein prison without a visitor for more than a year. i was not allowed to talk to anyoneand i was starving.â we tried to endure in the prisons.â some people went mad. somepeople have stayed mad. some people have lost their speech. once some of our friends werereleased from prison, they died soon afterwards because of what they'd suffered. i feel reallysad about that. have you ever asked shell to stop being involved
in politics? sometimes i will like him to stop, buthe doesn't want to stop, but he does not want to stop. shell's wife lwin mar says like everybodyin myanmar, all they want is a life free from oppression. but even now that the couple areworried that shell could be arrested at any time. even nowadays i worry for his health, becausehe was mentally or physically tortured for nearly 14 years. do you still see evidence of all of that timethat shell spent in prison?
sometimes he doesn't want to stay alone inthe home because he thought he will be captured, so he will always try and go out if i'm notat home. oh my goodness! because he was locked in the isolated for many many years - this is our life we cannotstop it. it's the younger generation lapping up new freedoms and pushing boundaries. none moreso than the me n ma girls. modelled on britain's spice girls they are the country's first allgirl group, and today they have invited me to their yangon studio to watch a rehearsalfor their latest single.
i am strong # got to stand tall # this is my world # nothing is going to shake it. we girls stand for like everybody who aresad, down and who feel unhappy about their life. because now everything is changing andit starts to change right now. # i'm stronger now # so it's goodbye. the me n ma girls are out to smash the stereotypethat the women in myanmar are timid and modest. breaking the mould has its challenging evenfor a pop band. in the past the girls have had their lyrics and their fashions censoredby the state. so these days do you feel like you are allowedto sing about whatever you want?
we can sing whatever we want but we have to sing within the boundaries. we know how farwe can go so we are in the boundaries but we are still pushing the boundaries. the girls have been working hard for yearsto cut through the conservatism of their country. now with growing freedoms, these talentedyoung women see a bright future. what do you think about the direction of this country right now? i believe our president and he is going reallywell, and also we support our president to get good democracy. i do believe and i wantto believe that this will last forever. we
just want to go forward, that's all we needto do and all we want to do. with its exposure to the world myanmar is attracting plenty of attention. the countryhas thrown its doors open to visitors. in the last year, the number of tourists hasdoubled and investors are flocking. so how does myanmar's government rate its progress?i've come to one of the capital emptiest cities to find out. naypyidaw was born in 2005, whenparliament was built on a greenfield site 300km north of yangon. here, farmers livein the shadow of myanmar's most powerful people and constant reminders of military rule. if there's a symbol of the bad old days it'sthis, a 20-lane highway running past parliament
that rarely sees more than a handful of cars,the sort of waste of the former military government everybody hopes is consigned to the past asmyanmar travels its own road to democracy. u ye htut is the information minister andspokesman for the president. u ye htut, thank you very much for speaking to us today. first of all, where are we onthe path to democracy in this country? so now we are entering the second 2.5 years of our transition to democracy. so if we lookback at those past 2.5 years we made a lot of achievements. but now we also have a lotof challenges. let's talk about the issue of political
prisoners. how many are there in jail rightnow in myanmar? i cannot tell that in exact number. around about? i think just maybe 200 or 300. it does seem entirely contradictory to thenotion of democracy though that there would be any political prisoners in jail right now? the president promised that at the endof this year there will be no more political prisoners in our country. and yet people who are protesting on politicalgrounds are still finding themselves in prison
for violating article 18.... yes. ....which is about not getting permissionto protest. that seems to me and to many others i'm sure watching this, nowhere near a seriousenough issue to go to jail for, not even for a day. yeah but that's a law. so that nowthat law was approved by the parliament. now the parliament is trying to review that particulararticle, article 18. it wasn't that long ago that somebody would be jailed for criticising the administration.how does it feel now to be on the side where
you are being criticised? in the first years we are not very usedto that kind of criticism. so sometimes some of the government officials are angry aboutthat criticism. but the president said you have to face this kind of criticism and whatyou have to do is to present the truth and to present the transparency of the government- the best thing to deal with the media. how do you want the world to see myanmar? i want the world to see that myanmaras you know, the country and the people who are trying their best to achieve their democraticgoal. sometimes we lack the experience. so we want the international community to seewe are struggling to achieve our goal and
try instead of blaming us, to please giveyour helping hand to us. elections in 2015 will do much to test the government's appetite for change and the eyesof the world are watching. today former us president jimmy carter is paying a visit aftera series of meetings to check on democracy's progress. in the middle of the journalisticthrong, veteran newspaper journalist and political prisoner, thiha saw. man up the front? thank you mr president. are we moving?are we moving in the right direction, in the right place?
i think the entire world has been pleasantlysurprised at the degree of progress that has already been made in just a brief 2.5 yearssince the last election. but a lot of change still needs to be made here. the magnitude of what this country still facesis daunting. ethnic conflicts are ongoing, hundreds of laws have to be rewritten andthe constitution that bars aung san suu kyi from ever becoming president needs to be overhauled.thiha sau says the people of myanmar must be patient. as far as myanmar's path to democracy,where are we at this present moment in time? we still have a long way to go and then
we are not really sure that we could reachthere and then that may take three years, maybe 20 years, we don't know. hopefully wehave taken the first few steps in the right direction. sometimes lack of experience, lack of humanresources and lack of financial and technical knowledge is a problem on our process. soto be seen as children who try to grow up and to enter the world, so you have to helpus.
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