Canadian paper reprints Burma op-ed with Kachin references removed

Timothy Garton Ash, British author, academic and friend af Aung San Suu Kyi's late husband.

An opinion piece by British author Timothy Garton Ash about Aung San Suu Kyi and the current situation in Burma, originally published in Britain's Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, was republished in Canada's Globe and Mail on Thursday with all references to the Kachin conflict removed.

Garton Ash, an Oxford professor and a close friend of Aung San Suu Kyi's late husband Michael Arris, was in Burma recently for the Irrawaddy Literary festival. His op-ed which discusses the challenges that both Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma face was originally published in the Guardian's Comment is Free section.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/06/aung-san-suu-kyi-vital-battles?CMP=twt_fd

While the following paragraph discussing the Kachin conflict is featured in the original Guardian article, it was completely left out of the Globe's version:

As I write, a Chinese-brokered negotiation may still not actually stop fierce fighting in the resource-rich Kachin state. If these issues are not resolved before the 2015 elections, with a degree of federalism that itself would require constitutional change, then voters might be polarised, late-Yugoslav-style, along ethno-religious chauvinist lines. In Kachin Baptist churches, I am told, prayers have been heard that "God grant us independence".

A few other minor sentences were condensed or removed from other places in the article but the elimination of any references to the Kachin conflict is the clearly the biggest differences in substance between the two versions of the article (Burma was also changed to Myanmar in line with the Globe's style). It is unclear if the editing of the Kachin paragraph was done unilaterally by the Globe or with Garton Ash's consent. Neither party was immediately available for comment.

Several alert readers who contacted the Kachin News Group about the difference in the two versions of the article expressed great disappointment that Globe's version of the article had the Kachin removed given the bloody fighting that has taken place over the past few months in Kachin state.

Garton Ash's lecture at the Irrawaddy Literary festival focused on what writer George Orwell meant for “Burma's past, present and future.” Orwell, famous for writing 1984 a novel about a futuristic totalitarian state in which the regime constantly re writes history to suit its own interests, served as a junior colonial police official in Burma. During his time in Burma Orwell witnessed police interrogations and executions, he then went on to write a novel entitled Burmese Days, followed by Animal Farm and 1984.

More than 100,000 civilians have been displaced by fighting between Burma's army and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) since June 2011 when the army unilaterally ended its 17-year ceasefire with the KIO. The fact that ceasefire ended some three months after President Thein Sein's nominally civilian government took office has raised doubts in the minds of many observers about the Thein Sein government's desire for peace in Kachin state.

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