Supporting Roles

Tu Ja
Campaigning for the Kachin

After serving the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) since its foundation in 1961, Deputy Chairman Dr. Tu Ja and five high-ranking Kachin leaders abruptly resigned in September.

Tu Ja said he quit the KIO to build up the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP), a political party he founded in March 2009 to contest the Burmese regime’s 2010 election.

Dr. Tu Ja

Tu Ja introduced his new party to the Kachin public at the KIO’s headquarters near Laiza on the Sino-Burmese border in July. About 800 people, including civilians and members of the KIO, the New Democratic Army-Kachin and the Kachin Consultative Committee attended the meeting.

Observers said Tu Ja’s resignation is part of a KIO strategy to deflect pressure from Burma’s military junta to transform their armed wing, the Kachin Independent Army (KIA), into border guard forces dominated by junta officers.

The KIO has refused to comply, proposing instead that the KIA serve as a Kachin Regional Guard Force operating independently of Burmese command.

Since signing a cease-fire with the junta in 1994, the KIO has skillfully pursued policies that harmonized the junta’s ambitions with its own.

Observers say Tu Ja’s resignation is part of a KIO strategy to ensure the Kachin have a political voice even if the junta moves militarily against the KIO’s forces. Whatever the outcome of this dispute, Tu-Ja’s KSPP will be able to represent the Kachin in the coming election.

Mong Thongdee
Stateless Boy Aims High

Mong Thongdee, a 12-year-old Burmese boy living in northern Thailand, was one of the year’s more improbable newsmakers.

After winning Thailand’s national origami-airplane championship in 2008, Mong qualified to represent the country at an international contest in Chiba, Japan, in September. But it wasn’t his impressive ability to fly paper airplanes for up to 12.5 seconds that grabbed headlines—it was the fact that his own life seemed to be permanently up in the air.

Mong Thongdee

He was almost denied his opportunity to travel to Japan because, as the son of migrant workers from Burma’s Shan State, he is regarded as stateless under Thai law, despite being born in Thailand.

When Thailand’s Ministry of the Interior refused to issue him a travel document because he didn’t have Thai identity papers, Mong became something of a cause célèbre, attracting a great deal of media attention in a country where countless other children share a similar fate.

In the end, his dream did come true, thanks to Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who met Mong in Bangkok and arranged for him to receive a temporary passport.

Mong went on to help the Thai team win gold in Japan, but his status in Thailand remains far from settled, with some reports suggesting that he and his family could be forced to leave the country early next year.

But this hasn’t stopped Mong from keeping his dreams alive. Not only does he hope to remain in Thailand, he also wants to take his plane-making skills to a much higher level. “I want to become an aeronautical engineer someday,” he said.

The anonymous Whistleblowers
Daring to Defy Their Military Masters

Burma’s military leaders regard dissent within the ranks as nothing short of treason. Loyalty is valued above all else, and any breach of the soldier’s iron-clad code of obedience to the authority of commanding officers is punished with long prison terms or worse. Even at the highest levels, top generals are routinely purged when they are suspected of harboring ambitions that conflict with the wishes of Snr-Gen Than Shwe, the ruling junta’s undisputed leader.

This is why it came as something of a shock when secret documents detailing the regime’s growing ties to North Korea were leaked to exiled media earlier this year.