Kachin News Group

In a bid at harassment, the police interrogated four officials of the acting committee for the cultural Thanksgiving and Manau festival in Burma’s northern Kachin State three weeks after the conclusion of the festivities, local sources alleged.

The four played important roles in the committee for the “2nd Thanksgiving and Manau festival” for Kachins in Bhamo (or Manmaw in Kachin) district on November 27 and 28.

The committee members in Bhamo city were first interrogated at the police station on December 19 regarding the publication and distribution of a daily newspaper and the new 2010 calendar during the festival. They were also quizzed for distributing recorded festival VCDs, according to sources close to them.

The police said that the two publications and the VCDs distributed during the two-day festival were done without authorization of the city military authorities, sources said.

They were also questioned regarding the attendance of the main Kachin armed group’s Vice-chairman Lt-Gen N’ban La Awng and his soldiers carrying arms, sources added.

The four Manau Acting Committee officials are committee Chairman Hpaulu La Wawm, Secretary Naw Grawng, Maha Brang Tawng and Accountant Ms. Roi Grawng, said the Bahmo Kachin cultural body’s sources.  

The chairman La Wawm was mainly targeted and accused of involvement in the illegal publication and distribution related to the Manau festival, a Kachin cultural leader told Kachin News Group.

Again on December 21, they were summoned to the city police station for detention. But they evaded imprisonment with two Kachin locals standing guarantors, said sources in the Bhamo Kachin Culture and Literature, or Jinghpaw Laili Laika hte Htunghking Hpung (JLH) in Kachin.

The cultural body said because of restrictions by the Burmese junta the festival could be celebrated for only two days when the original schedule was for three days.

Before the festival on November 12, a government bulldozer barged into the circular Manau dance ground, the cultural venue in Aung Ta village, two miles northeast of the city. It demolished the thin concrete layer in the circular field prepared for the festival.

The Manau Poles, the Kachin symbol in the field also had to be removed on December 10, which was 12 days after the festival on the orders of Col Khin Maung Myint, chairman of the Bhamo District Administration Office of the junta.