အရိပ္ကို တေစၦထင္ေနတဲ့ အာဏာရွင္တို႔လုပ္ရပ္

ကကကက

ကကကက

ဂီတေက်ာင္းက ဂီတဆရာ ဦးမိုးႏိုင္

ကကကကက

ဒီဓာတ္ပုံရယ္၊ ေအာက္မွာ ေဖာ္ျပထားတဲ့ဓာတ္ပုံနဲ႔ေဆာင္းပါးက အယ္လ္ေအတိုင္းမ္သတင္းစာမွာ ၂၀၀၈-ခုႏွစ္၊ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ(၃၀)ရက္၊ ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႔ထုတ္ သတင္းစာထဲကပါ။ သတင္းစာရဲ့မ်က္ႏွာဖုံးမွာ ဦးစားေပးေဖာ္ျပထားတဲ့ ေဆာင္းပါးတပုဒ္ပါ။ စာဖတ္သူတို႔ မူရင္းကို ဖတ္ႏိုင္ေအာင္ ကူးယူေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါတယ္။

ကကက

အာဏာရွင္မ်ားရဲ႕ ခ်ဳ႔ပ္ခ်ယ္မွဳေတြထဲက တခုကို ေရးျပထားတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အာဏာရွင္ေတြဟာ သူတို႔တေတြ သက္ဆိုးရွည္ဖို႔အတြက္ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြနဲ႔ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေနတယ္။ နည္းမ်ိဳးစုံနဲ႔ ၀င္ေရာက္ ခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္တယ္။ မရရင္ ရတဲ့နည္းနဲ႔ညစ္ပတ္ဖို႔ ဖ်က္ဆီးဖို႔ ၀န္မေလးၾကဘူး။ တိုင္းျပည္ရဲ့ အနာဂတ္ဆိုတာထက္ သူတို႔ရဲ့ အနာဂတ္ေကာင္းေစဖို႔ အားလုံးကို ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ႏွိပ္စက္ သတ္ျဖတ္ဖို႔ ၀န္မေလးပါဘူး။

ကကက

ပုံမွာပါတဲ့ ျမန္မာလူငယ္တဦးဟာ အေနာက္တိုင္းေတးဂီတကို သင္ယူေနတယ္။ သူ သင္ယူေနတဲ့ေက်ာင္းကို ေယးလ္တကၠသိုလ္နဲ႔ အလွဴရွင္အခ်ိဳ႕က ေထာက္ပံ့ထားတယ္။ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံတခုခုက ေထာက္ပံ့ထားတယ္ဆို ရင္ပဲ အာဏာရွင္မ်ားအေနနဲ႔ မၾကိဳက္ခ်င္ေတာ့ဘူး။ ဒါေပမဲ့ သူတို႔ရဲ့ သားသမီး ေျမးျမစ္ေတြကိုေတာ့ အေနာက္ ႏိုင္ငံေတြမွာ ပညာသင္ဖို႔နဲ႔ အေျခခ်ဖို႔ကို တိုက္တြန္းေနတယ္။

ကကက

အဲဒီရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕က အႏုပညာေက်ာင္းမွာ အႏုပညာသင္တန္းသားေတြဟာ ဘာသာေပါင္းစုံက ကေလးေတြပါ။ အသက္ ၄၀ အရြယ္ရွိတဲ့ ဦးမိုးႏိုင္က ဒါရိုက္တာတဦးပါ။ အခက္အခဲေတြၾကားက သူဟာ သင္တန္းသားေတြကို
ၾကိဳးၾကိဳးစားစားသင္ေပးေနတယ္။ လုပ္ေဆာင္သမွ်ကို နီးစပ္ရာ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးမ်ားထံ မျဖစ္မေန သတင္း ေပးေနရတဲ့အေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ သူ႔ေနာက္မွာ ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြက အၿမဲၾကည့္ေနေၾကာင္းေျပာျပထားတယ္။

ကကက

ႏိုင္ငံျခားက အႏုပညာရွင္မ်ား ေရာက္လာလို႔ အလည္အပတ္လာရင္ေတာင္ မလြတ္လပ္တဲ့အေၾကာင္း၊ ဧည့္သ ည္ကို ေခၚလာသူဟာ ကိုယ္တိုင္ပဲ တင္းတင္းက်ပ္က်ပ္ တာ၀န္ယူရေၾကာင္း၊ အရာအားလုံးဟာ သူတို႔တေတြရဲ့ ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္မွဳေအာက္မွာ လြတ္လပ္မွဳမရွိေၾကာင္းကို ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ တခါကဆို အလည္ေရာက္လာရင္း ဧည့္ ခံပြဲေလးလုပ္သြားတဲ့ ေရးတကၠသိုလ္က ေက်ာင္းသူ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားရဲ့ ဂီတပြဲအစီအစဥ္ကို ေနာက္ေဖးေပါက္မွ လာ၍ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ လက္ပါးေစအရာရွိမ်ားက လာေရာက္ပိတ္ပင္ေၾကာင္းလဲ တင္ျပထားတယ္။

ကကက

၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ အေရးအခင္းကို ဦးေဆာင္ခဲ့တဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသူေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား၊ ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္း ေဆာင္မ်ားကို မုန္းတီးတဲ့စိတ္ဓာတ္နဲ႔ ျမန္မာလူငယ္မ်ားရဲ့ ပညာေရးစနစ္ကို အာဏာရွင္မ်ားက စနစ္တက်နဲ႔ ဖ်က္ဆီးလိုက္ေၾကာင္း၊ က်ဴရွင္ေလးေတြ အျပင္မွာတက္၊ လဘက္ရည္ဆိုင္မွာ အခ်ိန္ကုန္ေအာင္ ထိုင္ၾကရင္းနဲ႔ တႏွစ္ကို တၾကိမ္သာက်င္းပတဲ့ ျမန္မာလူငယ္မ်ားရဲ့ လက္ရွိပညာေရးစနစ္ကို ေ၀ဖန္ထားေသးတယ္။

ကကက

စစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ားဟာ ကိုယ္က မူမမွန္ေလေတာ့ အရာရာကို ထိတ္လန္႔ေနတယ္။ လူစုစုျမင္တိုင္း ငါ့တို႔ကိုျပန္ ခ်ေလမလားလို႔ ဘ၀င္မက်ခ်င္ဘူး။ လုပ္သင့္ မလုပ္သင့္ဆိုတာ မစဥ္းစားေတာ့ဘူး။ ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ေတာ့တာပါပဲ။ အ ရိပ္ကို တေစၦထင္ေနတဲ့ အာဏာရွင္တို႔လုပ္ရပ္ဟာ တကယ္ကို နိဂုံးခ်ဳပ္သင့္ပါၿပီဗ်ာ။

ကကက

ကဲဗ်ာ ... ဒီေဆာင္းပါးကို ဖတ္ၿပီး အတိုအထြာေလးေတြ ေရးရင္း က်ေနာ္အာေခ်ာင္လိုက္တာ အေတာ္ေလး ေတာင္ ရွည္သြားၿပီ။ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေရ ... မင္းကိုယ္တိုင္ ဖတ္လို႔ရေအာင္ မူရင္းေဆာင္းပါးထဲက စာသားေတြကို

စာေပစီစစ္ေရးမွာ မတင္ဘဲ ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါတယ္။ ဖတ္လိုက္ပါဦးဗ်ာ . . .
ကကက

ကကကကကက

ကကက

Singing while under suspicion in Myanmar

ကကကက

A Yangon music school steers clear of politics, but attracts government snoops because of its support from U.S. and other foreign donors.

ကက

By Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 30, 2008
YANGON, MYANMAR -- The military government's tightening grip doesn't give people here much to sing about, and when they do feel the urge to make music, even that can be risky.

ငငင

The generals who rule Myanmar have spies snooping around for subversives in the most unlikely places, such as a small music school in a rented house sandwiched between a Hindu temple and a broomstick factory.
ကကက

It isn't a renegade hip-hop crib, or a blue-hazed den of protesting folkies, just a small rehearsal hall of plywood and particleboard where children peck away at piano keys and a chorus of university students sings with enough heart to raise the low roof.

ကကက

What riles the government is that the music school depends on foreign support, especially from a group of Yale University students and other American donors. Some of the generals' enforcers suspect a dangerous plot.

ကကက

After 45 years of military rule, that isn't as weird as it sounds. Xenophobic propaganda is one of the ways the generals rally support and scare off dissent, so Myanmar's people are bombarded with it. A billboard on a busy downtown street corner in Yangon, also known as Rangoon, declares: "Oppose those who rely on America, act as their stooges and hold negative views."

ကကက

This month, poet Saw Wai was arrested on suspicion of writing a coded anti-government message in a Valentine's verse published in a popular entertainment weekly. In Burmese, the first character of each word spells out: "Power crazy Senior General Than Shwe," referring to the military government's leader.

ကကက

The students at the Gitameit, or "Music Friends," school take their direction from the more universal language of music. They studiously avoid politics, but that isn't always enough to escape the probing eyes of the government.

ကကက

Founded four years ago, the school is one of the few places, outside of a temple or church, where people can go to learn how to play a Western musical instrument or read music in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

ကကက

Its students' struggle is a lesson in the often bizarre lengths to which the generals will go to maintain their hold on power. But they're not strong enough to stop music bringing people together, and giving them hope.

ကကက

You can feel it walking up the front path, in the breeze of notes from four upright pianos, a baby grand, guitars and traditional instruments that drifts from the rehearsal rooms, where jazz legends such as Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie look down from photocopied portraits taped to the walls.

ကကက

When the school opened, neighbors told the students they wouldn't last long. They were still going strong last year, and a few foreign visitors began dropping by, so intelligence agents started showing up.

ကကက

They reminded the students that Myanmar's security laws hold them responsible for anything their foreign guests do, and if the outsiders strayed into politics, the locals would go to jail.

ကကက

"Some people are using you for propaganda purposes," the agents warned. "We're going to watch your every move."

ကကက

There wasn't all that much to see. A 9-year-old girl, with pudgy cheeks and an infectious smile, comes regularly for piano lessons. Young men and women, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims among them, spend hours each day focused on sheet music, coaxing melodies from the strings of guitars, violins and pianos.

ကကက

Choir director U Moe Naing, 40, explained that the group members wanted to be good enough to perform for the public. They were working with foreign musicians and getting some experience by showing their talents to foreign music lovers, he told the agents.

သသသ

Naing, a pianist who once studied to be a geologist, didn't want trouble with the law. So he followed orders and reported weekly to the neighborhood intelligence agency office on any visitors and the school's activities.

ကကက

Yet the spies kept the heat on. They put a tail on Naing, showed his picture to people, interrogated his friends. They got especially pesky last May, when Naing's choir held a concert with the Spizzwinks(?), an all-male a cappella group from Yale University. Twenty Yale singers were on a three-week tour of Southeast Asia, with a five-day stop in Myanmar, where a Yale graduate had been teaching at Gitameit.

ကကက

An Ivy League glee club that hangs with the singing Whiffenpoofs wouldn't have made it onto any watch list in most other countries. But 15 minutes before the performance, a captain from the dreaded Special Branch police came backstage to poke around, while 250 people sat in the audience. The singers' butterflies morphed into terror that their show was about to be shut down as an anti-state activity.

ကကက

"He threatened me, saying, 'Maybe I'll come back to take you away,' " Naing said. "I was really afraid."

ကကက

The captain demanded to know where the foreign singers were from, and when Naing replied they were U.S. university students, the cop asked whether that meant they were American.

ကကက

Every answer only brought on another question, and it was getting uncomfortably close to curtain time, so Naing says he told the officer testily: " 'If you'd like to arrest us, OK. But please do it after the concert.' He didn't show up. Fortunately."

ကကက

And the show did go on, and the spies have kept their distance in recent months, but the music still doesn't come easily. The students have too much to worry about -- like getting a job after graduating from college.

သသသသ

Since 1988, when troops massacred hundreds of demonstrators to crush student-led protests, the government has treated universities not as sources of higher education crucial to the country's development, but as potential threats to its rule.
ကကကက

So the generals have reduced college campuses to facades. A typical university student in Myanmar takes classes by correspondence, never enters a library and attends class only for 10 days of cramming before exams.

ကကက

Many of the Gitameit's students were living life in a demoralized daze before they began making music for several hours each day.

ကကက

Kit Young, an American volunteer who teaches at the music school, has asked university students what they do with themselves on an ordinary day, and usually the reply is: "Sleep," she said. "Or they go out to tea shops with friends. They may go for some private tuition. There are exams only once a year -- and no classes."
သသသ

It's frustrating for young people desperate to get ahead in a stagnating economy dominated by the generals and their cronies. And that's the way the government likes things -- it doesn't need intelligent people asking too many questions.

ကကက

The government's iron walls and harassment are very effective at keeping the country in the dark. To the surprise of Nathaniel Ganor, a 21-year-old Yale computer science major who sings with the Spizzwinks(?), the Myanmar students were so isolated they knew little about the United States. And they didn't seem very curious to find out more.

ကကက

"One evening, sitting around the dinner table at a restaurant, I asked the students at my table, 'If you could visit America, what would you want to see?' " Ganor recalled. "One student looked at me strangely and said: 'That's ridiculous. I could never visit America. Besides, I have no idea what's there.' "
သသသ

Ganor decided he had to find a way to bring some of the Gitameit's singers to the U.S., and his group is trying to raise $60,000 to fly 16 of them on a two-week tour, with stops in San Francisco; New Haven, Conn.; New York and Washington.

ကကက

Naing often tells his singers that he plans to take them on tour. They laugh at him.

ကကက

But the students gain strength from making music. Their choir is in constant demand in entertainment-starved Yangon, where they perform for diplomats, and at weddings and concerts. They refuse to be silenced by skeptics or thugs.

ကကက

"For the country, I can't do anything -- only this little thing," Naing said. "The students arrive with little confidence, but I see a lot of leadership coming out. It's really good to see."က

ကကကကက

paul.watson@latimes.com