By YAN PAI / THE IRRAWADDY

Sources in Rangoon’s business community report that tycoon Tay Za visited Russia in June at the same time as Burma’s Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing. The commander is believed to have gone to Moscow to settle arms deals that were signed with Russia under Burma’s past military regime.

Sen Gen Min Aung Hlaing visited Moscow on June 23-29 at the invitation of Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.

He inspected the JSC RAC MiG plant near the capital Moscow and was provided with a test flight demonstration of Russia’s newly upgraded jet fighter, the MiG-29 M, government newspaper The New Light of Myanmar has reported. He also met Burmese military scholarship trainees who are receiving Russian training.

Tay Za, who is on a US sanctions list for procuring arms for Burma’s former military regime, flew to Moscow shortly after Ming Aung Hlaing arrived, several sources in Rangoon’s business community told The Irrawaddy.

Three prominent Burmese businessmen said during separate conversations that Tay Za met up with Min Aung Hlaing in the Russian capital, adding that the tycoon had also met the Burmese military trainees and provided them with some of money for their overseas stay. They said Tay Za had flown to Russia in the company of several other Burmese tycoons.

Posted by Jamie Pinnock

In recent months, international media has reported on the sporadic violence and ethnic tensions which have gripped the fledgling south-east Asian country of Burma. Reports show how the majority Buddhist population has conducted an almost systematic programme of harassment, persecution and violence against the minority population of Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state, which has seen hundreds of thousands of Muslims displaced to make-shift refugee camps, and dozens killed.

This week, Burma has once again been in full view of international media. In a Time magazine article entitled “The Face of Buddhist Terror”, Hannah Beech delivers a brutally honest account of the violence protracted by Burma’s Buddhists, writing candidly of the radical 969 movement who are held to be largely responsible for the protraction of such violence, and giving an unsympathetic exposé of the leader of this movement, monk Ashin Wirathu. Though his appearance suggests calm and compassion, his message—Beech contends— “crackles with hate”.

The article was particularly contentious because it claimed that Wirathu had been describing himself as the ‘Burmese Bin Laden’. Whilst the actual origin of the name is uncertain, Wirathu has denied using it, and instead accuses Muslims of labelling him as such.

Beech’s article, while alerting the international community to the situation in Burma, has triggered protests from a largely Buddhist population. They question the truth of Beech’s scathing attack on the figure who is, for many, a symbol of a future for the Buddhist population of Burma, as well as Beech’s suggestion that the 969 groups actions amount to acts of terror.

Two Buddhists have been jailed in Myanmar for murders that took place during religious violence in March. They are the first Buddhists to be convicted of any serious offence relating to the rioting, which mainly targeted Muslims and left around 40 people dead. The two...

By TODD PITMAN — Associated Press

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar — Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called home.

Smashed fragments of skulls rest atop the dirt. A shattered jaw cradles half a set of teeth. And among the remains lie the sharpened bamboo staves attackers used to beat dozens of people to the ground before drowning their still-twitching bodies in gasoline and burning them alive.

The mobs that March morning were Buddhists enraged by the killing of a monk. The victims were Muslims who had nothing to do with it – students and teachers from a prestigious Islamic school in central Myanmar who were so close to being saved.

In the last hours of their lives, police had been dispatched to rescue them from a burning compound surrounded by swarms of angry men. And when they emerged cowering, hands atop their heads, they only had to make it to four police trucks waiting on the road above.

It wasn’t far to go – just one hill.

Nehginpao Kipgen

Time magazine portrayed Wirathu, a prominent Myanmar Buddhist monk, as “The Face of Buddhist Terror” on the cover of its July 1 international edition.

The story has triggered mixed responses and has sparked a campaign to denounce the magazine for linking Buddhism with terror.

The article itself became so controversial and sensitive that the Myanmar government banned the magazine. Ye Htut, spokesperson for President Thein Sein, announced that Time “would not be sold and distributed to prevent the recurrence of racial and religious conflict”.

The magazine defended its story and said: “Time’s international cover story … shows the presence in Myanmar of an extremist movement that associates itself with Buddhism. Time is pleased by the debate and discussion this important piece has raised.”

While the Myanmar government condemned the article, Wirathu said the magazine is not against Buddhism but him. He accuses Muslim extremists of attempting to strip him of his monkhood.

Wirathu’s name has been associated with radical ideologies for some time now. Since 2001, he has warned that Muslims will take over Myanmar. He was jailed in 2003 for his radical sermons but released in 2012 as part of a general amnesty.

by Anthony Kuhn

To her many admirers in the international community, Aung San Suu Kyi remains one of the world’s best known democracy icons.

But in Myanmar, also known as Burma, she is now very much a politician who is being criticized for trying to cooperate with the former military rulers who kept her under house arrest for nearly two decades.

“ What we have is a situation where they’re very used to top-down, unquestioned power. So anyone who’s sitting out of the system, in a system that is still very new and untested, really has to negotiate things really carefully.- Sean Turnell, Myanmar expert at Australia’s Macquarie University

If you want to see the old, iconic Aung San Suu Kyi, just head to the bustling headquarters of her party, the National League for Democracy, or NLD, in Yangon, the country’s largest city and former capital.

Go past the tables selling Suu Kyi T-shirts, coffee mugs and calendars. Step in the door and look to the right, up on the wall. There she is, looking down at you, steely and defiant. The caption reads: “There will be change, because all the military has are guns.”

Posted by Margie Richards

 Eh Doh, at 62, can’t help but smile at the thought of starting a whole new life at his age, though that is just what he’s in the process of doing.

A native of Burma (also known as Myanmar), Doh and his family have spent the last 17 years in refugee camps in Thailand. Like thousands of others, they were forced to flee their village due to attacks from the Burmese militia, who have long targeted certain ethnic groups, such as their tribe, known as “Karen.”

Now Doh’s family, along with two other refugee families, are in temporary residence at Jubilee Partners in Comer.

“I feel like a small bird that has flown from the nest,” Doh said in halting English. “I will only look to the future and I will not look back.”

For Doh and his family, the future means a new way of life in America, and eventually, American citizenship.