Day Five, Monday 16 December 2013

Today, apart from our continued discussions on the New BNI structure and functions, we were visited by two guests, who certainly wouldn’t want to jeopardize their newly gained cordial relationship with the Burmese authorities by getting their identities revealed by me.

Their reports to the meeting, I think, are quite illuminating. Here are the excerpts:

• The country’s leadership is undergoing a cultural shock process between time honored practice of unquestioned obedience to authority and the emerging new culture of obedience only after one’s questions are satisfactorily addressed. (“I saw a  boss, who clearly was an ex-army officer, was hotly cut down to size by a young trainee”)

• One of the problems our newly independent young journalists and activists are facing is that they know very little about what had happened since 1988, let alone before it. When we talk about millions of IDPs, refugees and migrants and countless rights abuses against them, they are dumbfounded. They will need a lot of guidance from those who are in the know.

Another surprising revelation was that trainings are being conducted in Thailand again, after a period of moving inside the country. “Before, it was because of security we ran our trainings outside Burma. Now it’s the cost. Organizing trainings inside has proved to be more expensive than organizing them outside.”