Day Four. Saturday, 31 January 2015.
One friend has suggested whether I should rewrite Day Three because there is some sensitive information. I have thought about it carefully and decided that we should keep it as it is. For several reasons:
- I had already gone through my notes to choose what I should write and what I should not before I wrote it
- I had written carefully so not to make the impression that I was demeaning anyone
- I have great admiration for the type of work (dubbed citizenship diplomacy) that Harn Yawnghwe and Htoo Htoo Lay are doing and think they deserve recognition
Diplomats rarely are praised for the good work they are doing. Some of them are even villainized despite their good work. Like Robert Stewart, Viscount of Castlereagh ( 1769-1822), who had helped keep rebellion at home at bay and secure peace in Europe for a hundred years (1814-1914) but still despised and humiliated for more than 200 years until the meticulously researched work “Castlereagh: A Life” came out in 2012, thanks to the author John Bew. I don’t want our two intrepid envoys to wait that long - And like it or not, the cat is out of the bag and I’m willing and ready to face the music. Also I think, transparency in this line of work, to paraphrase a quote on statistics, is like wearing a bikini. What is revealed is suggestive but what is concealed is vital and I believe I have not touched on the vital. I hope I’m right
Still apologies to everyone concerned if I have unnerved you in any way — KJ
Today we are leaving for Tachilek and then to Chiangmai. Just before we left at 0830, we are treated to a big breakfast that will last me through the day.
There we are introduced to U Kyi Myint aka Zhang Zhiming, who became well known with his role in the Hsi Hsinwan battle fought between the Burma Army and the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). He says he is sorry he wasn’t back in time to join the meeting yesterday as he was in Naypyitaw to present a hydropower project to the ministry of electric power.
We also run into some of Sao Sai Leun’s kinfolks whom we had met on one of our trips into Hopeland.
The trip back is uneventful.
Back in Tachilek we are treated to a delicious lunch by U Lao Sang which I drink more than I eat. Then we are driven back to Mae Sai, where our hired minibus is waiting to take us back to Chiangmai.
All the way I spend most of the time thinking about Panghsang’s call for support of its separate statehood. Yesterday Sai La was replying that according to his boss Sao Yawdserk, it is a matter worth consulting among kinfolks rather than with outsiders. When you want to leave the family you have lived together for so long, you don’t just say goodbye and go. You try to straighten things out with the family before you do it. Which doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to leave. You do have. But you need to make sure your problems can be solved only by not continuing to stay. That there are no problems both for yourself and the family after your departure. I think I’m going to write more about it soon.
Just before I turn in I reread the closing line by Robert Kaplan about Burma in his “Monsoon”. I hope I — and the reader — will sleep over it.
The struggle over the Indian Ocean, or at least the eastern part of it near the top of the Bay of Bengal, may come down to who deals more adroitly with the Burmese hill tribes.
