Dr. Yan Myo Thein is a political commentator who resides in Yangon/Rangoon, Myanmar. He has been a political commentator for more than 20 years and has even been detained for his position as a leader of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions in 1989. First I would like to say that the tweet is in Burmese so some key information may or may not be missing. I used three different ways to translate it to get more than one translation.

In Dr. Yan Myo Thein’s tweet he criticizes The National Counseling Office and the State Counselor, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, for using English on an officials Burmese government document. Due to this there was apparently parts of the English version that didn’t line up with the Burmese version, so there was a loss in translation. This is causing some people to be unsure as to which version is actually correct. He also states that the The National Counseling Office/Aung San Suu Kyi should provide a clear definition due to this discrepancy. I am assuming that since the tweet is relatively recent (November 20th) that the subject is something to do with some document related to the Gambia vs. Myanmar ICJ genocide charges. Therefore, I think is is safe to assume that she wanted said document translated because it would be presented before the ICJ. The official languages used within the ICJ are English and French so this would make a lot of sense. Since it is such an important matter a slight difference in the language used could be interpreted much differently. This makes me wonder how they translated the document. If they used a translator then that kind of falls on them, but if they used forms of online computer translation (ex. google translate) then that would be interesting. These online translators are often accurate for individual words, but fall short sometimes when it comes to sentences which is why I used multiple translators. I doubt that they would use a translation application due to their flaws, but if they did it shows that our current level of translation technology is not good enough for legal means.

မြန်မာဘာသာပြန်တဲ့​နေရာမှာ အနည်းငယ်လွဲ​ချော်​နေတယ်လို့ ထင်မိပါတယ်။ နိုင်ငံ​တော်အတိုင်ပင်ခံပုဂ္ဂိုလ် ကိုယ်တိုင်
သွား​ရောက်မယ်လို့ English version အရ နားလည်လို့
မရနိုင်ပါ။ ဘယ်ဗားရှင်းက Original လည်းသိဖို့လိုပါမယ်။
နိုင်ငံ​တော်အတိုင်ပင်ခံရုံးကလည်း တရား၀င် တိတိကျကျ
ရှင်းလင်းသင့်ပါတယ်။

— Dr. Yan Myo Thein (@Yanmyothein) November 20, 2019

Help Received : https://www.linkedin.com/in/yan-myo-thein-46a18022

http://imtranslator.net/translation/myanmar-burmese/to-english/translation/

Google translate

Built in Twitter tweet translation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice

Tweet Link: https://twitter.com/Yanmyothein/status/1197153529707814916

Ethan Watts

Haikal Mansor, author of the linked tweet, is a very vocal Rohingya tweeter and blogger. On November 20th, Aung San Suu Kyi declared that she would go to The Hauge in order to defend Myanmar at the ICJ against the potential violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948, as accused by Gambia. Being a Rohingya muslim, clearly Mr. Mansor feels very strongly about this decision. First of all he criticizes her decision to defend Myanmar at the ICJ as she will be defending the militaries potentially genocidal like actions against the Rohingya people. Obviously, Mr. Mansor feels very strongly about this since he Rohingya and she is therefore going against something he believes in. Second of all he criticizes her choice of picking two military generals to help her defend at the ICJ. According to Ministry of the Office of the State Counselor this choice was, “in order to strengthen internal capacity and expertise, and provide legal opinions to relevant ministries on issues related to international criminal law.”(Two Myanmar Military Officers Join Int’l Criminal Justice Unit for ICJ Defense, Irrawaddy). Military spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun stated, “[The inclusion of the military officials] is at the government’s instruction. In the Special Unit on International Criminal Justice, two military officers are included and one of them is an expert on international law,”(Two Myanmar Military Officers Join Int’l Criminal Justice Unit for ICJ Defense, Irrawaddy). Therefore is doesn’t seem that the choice to include these two military generals was ASSK’s choice. Nevertheless, it shows that the the government and military do not want to take responsibility for their actions. However, it only makes sense that they would choose these military generals to help defend their case since they probably know the most about what actions the military took. That being said, I’m sure there will be no small amount of biases since it is in their interest to defend the militaries actions and make it look like they did nothing wrong. As for her being a puppet to the military, I wonder if ASSK was told or is being forced to go or if it was actually her choice? 

Help Received:

https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/two-myanmar-military-officers-join-intl-criminal-justice-unit-icj-defense.html/amp

https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/why-will-aung-san-suu-kyi-personally-defend-myanmar-against-genocide-claims/

https://www.haikalmansor.com/   Haikal Mansor’s Blog

Tweet from Haikal Mansor:

Ethan Watts

#AungSanSuuKyi, the military's puppet, is OUT OF HER MIND!

First she declared she'll be defending the case at the ICJ as "the Agent" of genocidal #Myanmar.

Now she formed 'International Criminal Justice' unit and included 2 military generals. #Rohingyahttps://t.co/5QUi6up8D6

— Haikal Mansor (@HaikalMansor) November 28, 2019

 

The first that is rather obvious is that almost the entire blog is in Burmese. I think the persons name is Ko Htike. There are some posts and little sections that are in english. This leads me to believe that the blogger Ko Htike, knows english but chooses to use Burmese so that more natives can read the blog. Most posts are related to politics or current events/news. There is a section on the right side that lists all of the different categories. The second thing that stands out is the amount of pictures on the blog. The blogger uses many pictures from events in his/her posts. These pictures really draw you attention as there are pictures of riots/violence, political figures, and protests. The one that really stands out are the pictures of the anniversary of the saffron revolution. This interestingly is also one of the only posts in english. I wonder if this is because the saffron revolution was a monumental event in Burma that people around the world heard about? I would expect this persons blog to be traffic related to the topic, especially some from non Burmese speakers. The blog also has lots of political images on the right side with different slogans, pieces of information, or messages on the images. I can’t translate what is on the picture so I am not exactly sure what the ones in Burmese say. The posts in english seem to be calling people to action and also some criticisms. The blogger also has some videos posted along the side. They seem to be songs with political messages and motives(not in english). Something that caught my attention as well is that the blogger has posted links to other webpages (popular Burmese news sources and webpages) and also fellow bloggers. This helps grow other Burmese blogs and lead blog visitors to informational sources. The blogger also has their email posted if you would like to contact them. I do not see any forms of social media posted. It also seems like there is a pretty active group of followers. Some posts have up to 78 comments, but some other only have single digits. The website has a pretty simple interface to navigate for people who aren’t as tech savy.

Help received:

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bloggers-in-Burma-keep-world-informed-during-2520952.php      used this to find the blog.

http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/     actual blog

Ethan Watts

The news article is about hardline Burmese monks and how they are refusing to stop using facebook despite mans posts and accounts essentially being banned for hate speech like offenses. These hardline monks believe the bans to be violations of their freedom of expression. Despite the bans the hardline monks are going to keep using FaceBook under fake profiles in order to “tell the truth” and spread their message. Many of these accounts are being deactivated after FaceBook asks them to delete posts, thus the creation of new accounts by the monks. Nearly 700,00 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh after what is being called an “ethnic cleansing” event. There is also a bit of a language problem. The FaceBook community guidelines are in english, so when they were translated, biases arose. The Rohingya Muslims are viewed as “illegal immigrants” by many Buddhists.

I found this article interesting because it’s about a negative that has come with Web 2.0, ICTS, and social media. Here we can see a huge downside to these new forms of technology. They are allowing people, in this case monks, to express their radical or hateful opinions about Burma’s ethnic minorities. Instead of these new technologies fostering positive messages, it is allowing for these hardline monks to continuously harass and spread hateful content online with no real world punishments. They are even starting to do it anonymously. The problem in this situation is that because it is so easy to make a FaceBook account the monks can just continuously make new accounts and post hateful content. Along with a language problem, we are also seeing an ethnic and religious one similar to the LTTE in Sri Lanka.

Help Received: http://english.dvb.no/ Democratic Voice of Burma. Article Link: http://english.dvb.no/news/hardline-monks-in-burma-vow-to-stay-on-facebook-despite-ban/81043

Ethan Watts

 

September 26^th, 2019

 

Dear Hlaing,

 

I was wondering if you would like to come with me and our group on the trip to the Nay Pyi Taw Safari Park this year. I already have many people interested in coming and we’ve already made the proper arrangements and reached out to the leaders of the trip. The group will form up at the park across from my apartment next Saturday night, the 1^{st .}of November, at 0930. Make sure to bring your phone so we can communicate in case anybody gets lost, or maybe somebody will forget something at home.

 

Since you have never been on the yearly trip with us, I’ll tell you how last year’s safari went. It started out in the morning. Our tour guide had a knife in case any snakes jumped at us. They usually aren’t very violent, but last year a couple of them lunged out from a tree and bite some of us. A few people ended up in the hospital. They can also shoot venom from a distance. To take precautionary measures, this year we are also bringing some anti-venom and face masks so nothing gets in our mouths or eyes. As the safari went on more tour groups joined us and some of them are coming this year as well. We ended up with a huge group by the end of the safari. Last year somebody also died because they were run over by the car (this is very rare). I would also recommend brining something to write on, we like to hold up signs to let other tour groups know who we are and what we’re about. We may also have to split up and relocate elsewhere for some of the activities. Once again, please bring a phone and have Facebook. We use the messaging system and our Facebook page to communicate with each other.

 

One of my main goals this year is to see the infamous albino elephant at the park. It is very hard to find. He is like the king of the park so it will be great if we catch his attention.

 

I am expecting this year’s trip to be very effective. Remember, don’t provoke any of the animals, especially the snakes and look out for the white elephant. Remember, the park across from my apartment next Saturday night, the 1^{st .}of November, at 0930.

 

Sincerely,

 

Kywe Htin

 

Help received: google used for finding a park in Burma and some other minor things, momjunction.com for Burmese names, goaway.com for Myanmar nature and wildlife information.

 

Ethan Watts