ASIA / PACIFIC
November 21, 2016
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Railway for Myanmar’s main city is
a slow-paced window into past
By Elaine Kurtenbach
The Associated Press
ANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s commercial
capital is fast shedding its sleepy backwater
trappings as the city builds new roads, hotels, and
office buildings, but the Circle Line railway remains a
world apart from the traffic jams and chaos of Yangon’s
streets.
Long overdue for upgrades, the 28-mile line slowly
trundles through 38 stations around the city, past tin
shacks and fields of watercress, palm trees, and bananas,
gated communities, and factory zones.
The railway opened in 1877 when Myanmar, then
known as Burma, was a colony of Britain. British forces
destroyed Yangon’s ornate central station in 1943 during
World War II, as they fled the city ahead of Japanese
troops.
The station appears little changed since it reopened in
1954. At 100 kyats to 200 kyats (8 cents to 16 cents) a ride,
depending on distance, it’s the cheapest public transport
option for travelling around the city of 7.4 million,
carrying more than 100,000 people a day.
Commuters traipse across its tracks, squatters bed
down on the train platforms. Hawkers board to sell fish,
tangerines, and SIM cards, and then climb back off to wait
for more customers.
A group of kids, not quite teenagers, climbs aboard,
hauling homemade bird houses leftover from a day of
peddling downtown. Back and forthing through the
carriage, they take turns gazing out the door before
eventually alighting, chattering and laughing, at a stop
far out in the suburbs.
Japan’s aid agency has drawn up a master plan for
rebuilding Yangon station and modernizing the trains.
Yangon invited tenders for the project, but progress has
lagged.
Only travelling at most a bit over 12 miles an hour, the
train is clean but no frills, its open windows the only
Y
WITNESS IN HIDING. Harra Kazuo, the live-in partner of alleged
drug pusher Jaypee Bertes, covers her face to protect her identity during
an interview at the Commission on Human Rights office in Quezon City,
north of Manila, the Philippines, in this September 7 file photo. Bertes
was allegedly shot to death by police following a drug raid that is part
of the continuing anti-drug campaign of Philippine President Rodrigo
Duterte. The Commission on Human Rights has feared for her safety
while it probes her case and has put her under an extraordinary wit-
ness-protection program. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)
Speaking out for drug war
victims, Filipina goes into hiding
By Todd Pitman
The Associated Press
ANILA, The Philippines — When police shot to
death Harra Kazuo’s common-law husband and
his father following a drug raid in the
Philippines, she sought one thing: justice.
In a television interview shortly after their deaths in
July, the 26-year-old mother accused two officers of killing
them in cold blood. She then recounted the allegations
before a Philippine senate committee investigating the
country’s brutal drug war in testimony broadcast
nationwide.
What Kazuo has gotten instead, though, is a life lesson
in the consequences of speaking out. Today, she lives with
her three children in hiding, sheltered by an extraordi-
nary witness-protection program run by the country’s
independent Commission on Human Rights, which has
feared for her safety while it investigates the case.
That such a program exists is a powerful indictment of
the lack of trust many have in the country’s notoriously
corrupt police, who are spearheading an anti-drug
campaign that has left more than 4,000 people dead in just
a few months. It also illustrates the failures of a broken
justice system few believe can hold anyone to account.
Kazuo said she is pushing the case because “what is
happening is not right.”
“I want them to feel how they treated my husband,” she
told The Associated Press. “I want them to feel what it’s
like for a family to lose a loved one.”
Although both officers have been suspended and have
attended preliminary hearings, city prosecutor Orlando
Mariano said they remain free and neither has been
indicted. If prosecutors determine the evidence is too
weak, both men could be end up being absolved.
Jose Luis Martin “Chito” Gascon, who directs the
Manila-based rights commission, said no police have been
charged criminally in court since the drug war began
despite persistent reports of security forces summarily
executing drug suspects. National police spokesman
Dionardo Carlo, however, said police have been arrested
and charged, but he could offer no details.
Either way, the killing of Kazuo’s family members “is
the highest profile case we’ve had so far, and it’s not even
in court yet,” Gascon said. “So what do you think’s going to
happen to the rest — the ones that got no attention and
have already been forgotten?”
President Rodrigo Duterte unleashed his campaign to
rid the country of narcotics immediately after taking office
June 30. The effort has been praised by a population
exasperated by corruption and crime, but it has been
condemned by the United Nations, foreign governments,
and activist groups because of its staggering death toll
and apparent disregard for human life.
Kazuo acknowledges that her husband, Jaypee Bertes,
was a small-time methamphetamine dealer. But she
insists he only pushed the drug because he could find no
other work.
Just before midnight on July 6, police raided their tiny
one-room apartment in a Manila slum. The officers could
not find any drugs, but they hauled 28-year-old Bertes
away anyway, along with his father, 49-year-old Renato.
When Kazuo visited them at a police station the next
morning, both men were severely bruised. Hours later —
after she left — they were shot dead at the end of a narrow
corridor, each three times.
Police said the men were killed after one of them
attempted to grab a firearm belonging to the officers. But
commission officials, who conducted their own forensics
investigation, said the detainees had been beaten so badly
Continued on page 4
M
RELIC RAILWAY. A hawker walks among passengers while trying
to sell cellphone cards on a Circle Line train in Myanmar (also known
as Burma). The country’s commercial capital is fast shedding its sleepy
backwater trappings as the city builds new roads, hotels, and office build-
ings, but Yangon’s Circle Line railway is a world apart from the traffic jams
and chaos of the city’s streets. (AP Photo/Elaine Kurtenbach)
breeze on a stuffy evening. The view: an intimate glimpse
into kitchens, open-air sports bars packed with men
watching soccer on big-screen color televisions, fathers
holding toddlers up to watch the train pass.
Only after the sun has disappeared and dark has fully
fallen are dim lights switched on, as the train slowly heads
back toward the Yangon terminus.
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HEALTH HAZARD. A boy sits on the shoulders of his mother while
participating in a protest against air pollution in New Delhi, India. Even for
a city considered one of the world’s dirtiest, the Indian capital hit a new
low — air so dirty you could taste and smell it; a gray haze that makes
a gentle stroll a serious health hazard. According to one advocacy group,
government data shows that the smog that enveloped the city was the
worst in the past 17 years. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Other Indian cities join Delhi
in air pollution emergency
LUCKNOW, India (AP) — The sickening air pollution
that led the Indian capital to shut schools and
construction sites prompted similar measures in
neighboring cities.
Officials in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh dealt
with acrid smog that blanketed the state.
For more than a week, New Delhi’s skies were filled
with a thick haze that has made people’s eyes sting and
their throats sore.
Air pollution experts blame myriad pollution sources,
from diesel-burning cars and seasonal crop burning to
garbage fires and stoves fuelled with kerosene and cow
dung. Winter weather patterns also mean there is less
wind to circulate the air.
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