ဂ်ပန္သတင္းေထာက္တဦး၏ မွတ္စုမ်ား – အပုိင္း (၂)

ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ စစ္အစိုးရအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကာလတခုမွာ ထူးထူးဆန္းဆန္းေငြစကၠဴေတြကို သံုးခဲ့တာရွိပါတယ္။ ေငြအမ္းရ၊ လဲရတာ ဘယ္လိုမွအဆင္မေျပတဲ့ ၄၅ က်ပ္တန္၊ ၉၀ တန္ ေငြစကၠဴေတြပါပဲ။

ျပန္ၾကည့္ရင္ ၄၅ က်ပ္တန္ေရာ ၉၀ တန္ေရာ ၉ ကေန အဆတုိးသြားတဲ့ ကိန္းဂဏန္းေတြပါပဲ။ ၉ ငါးလီ ၄၅၊ ၉ ဆယ္လီ ၉၀၊ ဒီလိုပါ။ ေလ့လာသူေတြကေတာ့ ဒီလို ဂြက်က် ေငြစကၠဴေတြကိုထုတ္ျဖစ္ဖို႔ ေဗဒင္ဆရာေတြက ေနာက္ကြယ္ကေနအၾကံေပးတာလို႔ ဆုိၾကပါတယ္၊ ေဗဒင္ဆရာေတြဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္ကဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြ တခုခုမလုပ္ခင္ ရက္ေကာင္းရက္ျမတ္ေရြးတဲ့ေနရာ၊ အရပ္မ်က္ႏွာ ေရြးခ်ယ္တဲ့အခါ၊ ကိန္းဂဏန္းေတြေရြးတဲ့ အခါမ်ဳိးမွာ အခါေတာ္ေပးေလ့ရွိပါတယ္။

“ျမန္မာျပည္က ထိပ္တန္းစစ္ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြဟာ ေသေရးရွင္ေရးကိစၥေတြမွာ ေဗဒင္ကိုအားကိုးၾကတယ္” လို႔ တိုက်ဳိတကၠသိုလ္၊ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ မႏုႆေဗဒဌာန (cultural anthropology) ပါေမာကၡ ကီကို တိုဆာ (Keiko Tosa) က ဆုိပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာျပည္က ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားဟာ န၀ရတ္လက္စြပ္ကို ၀တ္ၾကပါတယ္။ ပတၱျမားက အလယ္က၊ စိန္အပါအ၀င္ တျခားရတနာ ၈ မ်ဳိးက ေဘးကေန ၀ုိင္းရံထားတဲ့ လက္စြပ္ပါ။ ကံေကာင္းမယ္။ အဆုိးေတြနဲ႔ ကင္းေ၀းမယ္လို႔ ယုံၾကည္ၾကပါတယ္။ ေဒၚေအာင္ ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္ကေပးစာတခုမွာ ႏုိ္င္ငံေရးသမားေတြ နံပါတ္ကိုးအေပၚယံုၾကည္ၾကတဲ့ကိစၥဟာ လူရယ္စရာ၊ ခပ္ည့ံည့ံျပက္လံုးတခုပါပဲလို႔ ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။

စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ နံပါတ္ ၁ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးသန္းေရႊက ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ကိုေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ဖို႔ အမိန္႔ေပး လုိက္တာလည္း ေဗဒင္ရဲ႕အလိုအရပဲလို႔ ယံုၾကည္ၾကပါတယ္။ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္သစ္ကိုမေျပာင္းရင္ စစ္အစိုးရ ပ်က္စီးကိန္းဆုိက္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ လက္စြဲေတာ္ေဗဒင္ဆရာရဲ႕အလိုအရ ေျပာင္းသြားတာလို႔ ဆုိၾကပါတယ္။

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕က ပညာတတ္တေယာက္က “ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးၾကီးက အိပ္မက္ထဲမွာ သူ႔ေခါင္းကို ဆင္နင္းတယ္လို႔ အိပ္မက္မက္တယ္၊ အဲဒီအိပ္ မက္ကို အခါေတာ္ေပးေဗဒင္ဆရာက အတိတ္ေကာက္ေတာ့၊ ဒါဟာ ကံဆုိးမယ့္နိမိတ္ပဲ။ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ကို ေျပာင္းမွျဖစ္မယ္လို႔ အၾကံေပးတယ္” လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုေကာလဟလေတြကို ဘယ္သူကစျဖန္႔သလဲဆိုတာကေတာ့ စိတ္၀င္စားဖို႔ ေကာင္းပါတယ္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး သန္း ေရႊဟာ မိန္းမေၾကာက္သူျဖစ္ၿပီး ေဗဒင္ကို အလြန္အကြၽံယုံတဲ့ သူ႔မိန္းမေျပာသမွ် လိုက္လုပ္ေနရတာဆုိတဲ့ ေကာလဟလမ်ဳိးေတြလည္းရွိပါ တယ္။

ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွာ က်ေနာ္တည္းခုိတဲ့ ဟိုတယ္ကမန္ေနဂ်ာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးရဲ႕အေဖက စစ္တပ္ကအရာရွိလို႔ ေျပာၾကပါတယ္။ ေနျပည္ေတာ္ကို ေျပာင္းလာတာ ေဗဒင္နဲ႔ပတ္သက္မႈရွိသလားလို႔ေမးၾကည့္ေတာ့ သူက “ေဗဒင္ – ဟုတ္လား” လို႔ သံေယာင္လုိက္ေျပာရင္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္ ေျမပံုကို ျဖန္႔လုိက္ပါတယ္။ ေျမပံုေပၚက လမ္းမႀကီးေတြကို လိုက္ေရတြက္ၾကည့္ေတာ့ လမ္းမႀကီး ၉ သြယ္ကို ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။

ဒါေပမယ့္ မန္ေနဂ်ာအမ်ဳိးသမီးကေတာ့ စစ္ေရးအျမင္က အဓိကက်တယ္လုိ႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဂ်ပန္ေခတ္မွာလည္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္ဟာ စစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္ျဖစ္ဖူးတယ္လုိ႔ သူကေျပာပါတယ္။ လြတ္လပ္ေရးရခါစက အစိုးရကို ဆန္႔က်င္ တုိက္ခုိက္ခဲ့တဲ့ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီကလည္း ဂ်ပန္ေခတ္ စစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္ကို ျပန္အသံုးခ်ခဲ့ဖူးတယ္လို႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။ ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွာ အေရွ႕နဲ႔အေနာက္သြယ္တန္းေနတဲ့ ေတာင္တန္းရွိပါတယ္။ ျမစ္ေတြက ၀ုိင္းရံေနပါတယ္။ ေနျပည္ေတာ္က စစ္ေရးအျမင္အရ သဘာ၀ခံတပ္ႀကီးေတြရွိတယ္လို႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။

ဒီလိုနဲ႔ မတ္လမွာ ရာထူးက အနားယူသြားတဲ့ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးသန္းေရႊ၊ လက္ရွိသမတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္နဲ႔ တျခားအရာရွိေတြဟာ ေတာင္တန္းႀကီးရဲ႕ အေရွ႕ဘက္မွာ အိမ္ေတြ အသီးသီးေဆာက္ၿပီး ေနၾကပါတယ္။ အေရွ႕ဘက္က လြင္ျပင္အထိေပါက္တဲ့ ေျမေအာက္လႈိင္ေခါင္းေတြကလည္း ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား တူးထားၾကတယ္လို႔ အဆုိရွိပါတယ္။ တျခားႏိုင္ငံေတြက ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ေတြက ေျမေအာက္လႈိင္ေခါင္း ေဆာက္ေနဆဲဆုိတာ အေသအခ်ာယံုၾကည္ထားၾကပါတယ္။ ေကာလဟလမ်ဳိးစံုထဲမွာ နယူးကလီးယား စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ေဆာက္တယ္ဆုိတာလည္း ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။

အီရတ္သမတေဟာင္းရဲ႕နာမည္က ဆာဒမ္ဟူစိန္ပါ။ စိန္ဆုိတာပါတယ္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးသန္းေရႊနာမည္ကေတာ့ ေရႊနဲ႔ဆံုးပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုနဲ႔ အီရတ္ကို အေမရိကန္ကတုိက္ခုိက္ၿပီးတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ “စိန္ၿပီးရင္ ေရႊအလွည့္လာမယ္” ဆုိတဲ့ ေကာလဟလေတြ ထြက္ေပၚခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီေကာလဟလေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာျပည္က ဒီမုိကေရစီလႈပ္ရွား သူေတြကိုႏွိပ္ကြပ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ မဆင္မေျပျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး သန္းေရႊအတြက္ အေမရိကန္ တပ္ေတြ၀င္တိုက္မွာကို ထိတ္လန္႔သြားပံုရပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာျပည္အႏွ႔ံ ခရီးသြားမယ္ဆုိရင္လည္း တကၠသိုလ္ေတြကို တႏိုင္ငံလံုးအႏွ႔ံမွာ အမ်ားႀကီးကို ေတြ႔ရမွာပါ။ အရင္တုန္းက ရန္ကုန္တကၠသိုလ္၊ မႏၱေလးတကၠသိုလ္ေလာက္ရွိရာကေန အခုေတာ့ ၿမိဳ႕ငယ္ေတြအထိ တကၠသိုလ္ေတြရွိလာပါတယ္။ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြေခါင္းေဆာင္တဲ့ ဒီမုိကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားမႈေပၚ ေပါက္ခဲ့ၿပီးကတည္းက အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက တကၠသိုလ္ေတြကို ေဒသအလုိက္ သီးျခားစီျဖစ္ေအာင္ ခြဲထုတ္ လုိက္လို႔ပါပဲ။

“တကၠသုိလ္ေတြကို အခုလိုခြဲလိုက္ရတာ အေတာ္ဆံုးေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ဒီမုိကေရစီလႈပ္ရွားမႈထဲမွာ ပါ၀င္မလာရေအာင္ ႀကိဳတင္ကာကြယ္ ထားလိုတဲ့ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ပါပဲ။ တကၠသိုလ္ ပညာေရးအရည္ အေသြးေတြက်ဆင္းကုန္ရင္ တုိင္းျပည္လည္း ပ်က္ေလာက္တယ္။ ေနာက္ဆံုးမွာ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ကိုပါ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ လုိက္တာကေတာ့ ေက်ာင္းသားေတြနဲ႔ ၀န္ထမ္းေတြပူးေပါင္းၿပီးေတာ့ အစိုးရယႏၱရားကို ဆိုးဆုိးရြားရြား ထိ ခုိက္ေစေလာက္တဲ့အထိ မၿငိမ္သက္မႈေတြလုပ္မလာေအာင္ ႀကိဳတင္ကာကြယ္တဲ့အေနနဲ႔၊ ၿငိမ္၀ပ္ပိျပားေရးအတြက္ အစိုးရက အဆံုးစြန္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ပဲ။” လို႔ ရန္ကုန္ အုိင္တီကုမၸဏီတခုက ဥကၠဌက ေျပာပါတယ္။

ေနျပည္ေတာ္က နာမည္ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားဟာ ပါဠိအမည္ေတြခ်ည္းပါပဲ။ ျမန္မာျပည္က တုိင္းရင္းသား ေတြအပါအ၀င္ အမ်ားစုသက္၀င္ယံု ၾကည္ၾကတဲ့ ေထရ၀ါဒဗုဒၶဘာသာက်မ္းေတြမွာ အသံုးျပဳတဲ့ ဘာသာစကားျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အစုိးရက ဗုဒၶဘာသာကို ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ခဲ့တဲ့ သာသနာ့ဒါယိကာမင္းေတြကို ေလးစားသမႈျပဳတဲ့ဆိုတဲ့သေဘာမ်ဳိးလည္း ျဖစ္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။

ေနျပည္ေတာ္က စစ္တပ္နယ္ေျမမွာ ေလးစားေလာက္တဲ့ ျမန္မာဘုရင္ႀကီး သံုးပါးရဲ႕႐ုပ္ထုႀကီးေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ ေနျပည္ေတာ္ဆုိတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ကလည္း မင္းေတြစံျမန္းရာဌာနဆုိတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ပါပဲ။

“ေနျပည္ေတာ္ဆုိတဲ့ ေခၚတြင္ေစတာကေတာ့ ဘုရင္ေခတ္ကို ျပန္အသက္သြင္းတဲ့ သေဘာပါပဲ”လို႔ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအင္အားစုပါတီရဲ႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ေျပာပါတယ္။

ေနျပည္ေတာ္အေျခစိုက္ သံတမန္တဦးကေတာ့ ျမန္မာအစိုးရထဲက ထိပ္တန္းေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြက ခပ္ညံ့ညံ့ လူေတြမဟုတ္ၾကဘူးလို႔ေျပာပါတယ္။ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ကို မဟာဗ်ဴဟာ ႐ႈေထာင့္၊ အက်ဳိးသင့္ အေၾကာင္း သင့္စဥ္းစားၿပီးမွ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ဖုိ႔ ဆံုးျဖတ္လုိက္တာလို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္၊ သူ တုိ႔စဥ္းစားတဲ့ အေၾကာင္း ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာထဲမွာ ေဗဒင္ကိန္းဂဏန္းေတြလည္းပါမယ္ဆုိတာ စဥ္းစားၾကည့္လို႔ရပါတယ္။ ဒီမုိကေရစီ အင္အားစု ေတြထဲမွာလည္း ဗမာလူမ်ဳိးက အမ်ားစုပါပဲ။

ဒီမုိကေရစီအင္အားစုေတြက ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္ ၾသဂုတ္လ ၈ ရက္ေန႔ ၈ ေလးလံုးေန႔မွာ အေထြေထြသပိတ္ႀကီး ဆင္ႏႊဲခဲ့ၿပီး၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ က လူထုကို ပထမဆံုးမိန္႔ခြန္းေျပာတဲ့ေန႔ကလည္း ၾသဂုတ္လ ၂၆ ရက္ေန႔မွာျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ ၂ နဲ႔ ၆ ေပါင္းရင္လည္း ၈ ပဲ ရပါတယ္။

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ေခါင္းေဆာင္တဲ့ အမ်ဳးိသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္မွာ ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီ၀င္ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြကို အတုိက္အခံေတြ အတြက္ ၈ ဂဏန္းက ကံေကာင္းေစတဲ့နံပါတ္လားလို႔ ေမးၾကည့္ပါတယ္။ ဦးခင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ၈ ဂဏန္းဆုိတာက ကံေကာင္းတဲ့နံပါတ္မဟုတ္တဲ့အေၾကာင္း၊ ဘုရင္ေတြေခတ္တုန္းက နိမိတ္မေကာင္းတဲ့နံပါတ္လုိ႔ အယူရွိခဲ့တဲ့အေၾကာင္း၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ၈ ဂဏန္းကိုသံုးၿပီး အစိုးရကို ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္ခဲ့တာလို႔ ေျပာျပပါတယ္။

စစ္ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြ ၉ ဂဏန္းအေပၚ ယံုၾကည္တဲ့အေပၚမွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္က ရယ္စရာလို႔သေဘာ ထားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အတုိက္အခံေတြကိုယ္တုိင္က်ေတာ့လည္း ၉ ဂဏန္းသမားအစိုးရကို ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္ဖို႔ ၈ ဂဏန္းကို အသံုးခ်ေနတယ္ဆိုတာကေတာ့ ၾကားလူေတြရဲ႕ အျမင္မွာ လူရယ္စရာပဲမဟုတ္ပါလား။

မုိင္နီခ်ီ ရွင္ဘြန္းမွာပါတဲ့ မူရင္းေဆာင္းပါးျဖစ္ပါသည္။

Myanmar’s military government obsessed with fortune telling and ‘lucky’ number 9
Takayuki Kasuga
(Mainichi Japan) January 21, 2012

Strange banknotes were used at one point in Myanmar while the country was under military rule. The bills, whose face values were 45 and 90 kyats, were apparently inconvenient for consumers in Myanmar.

Both figures are a multiple of nine, and observers believe that fortune-tellers were involved in the decision to issue these bills. Fortune-telling is often used to select the best date, direction and figure to take some action.

In 1988, Myanmar’s military staged a coup on Sept. 18, both the month and date are multiples of nine.

“The figure nine is regarded as lucky in Myanmar as people associate the number with the nine virtues of Buddha,” says Keiko Tosa, professor of cultural anthropology at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. “Fortune-telling is popular among top military leaders there as what happens in a moment can lead to their death.”

Many prominent figures in Myanmar wear a ring with nine different jewels, with a ruby in the center surrounded by eight other jewels including a diamond, in the hope that the rings will bring good luck and expel evil.

Aung San Suu Kyi wrote in her column, “Letter from Burma,” in the Mainichi Shimbun, “The importance that political leaders attach to the figure nine is a bit of joke, a bad joke.” The top leader of the military regime, Than Shwe, gave the green light to the relocation of the capital. Widespread speculation that he decided to shift the capital according to the results of fortune-telling is based on rumors that he had been warned by his personal fortune-teller that his military regime would collapse unless he relocated the capital.

An intellectual living in Yangon said, “He had a nightmare that his head was trampled on by an elephant. After that, his fortune-teller advised him to shift the capital because his nightmare was a sign that something unlucky would happen.”
One cannot help but wonder who spread such rumors. Other rumors have it that Than Shwe is a hen-pecked husband and followed advice from his wife who was immersed in fortune-telling.

In Naypyidaw, I stayed at a hotel managed by a woman, whose father is reportedly a military officer. I asked her whether the capital of Mynmar was shifted to Naypyidaw based on fortune-telling.

She said, “Fortune-telling?” and spread out a map of the city. The signs of rotaries particularly stood out on the map, so I counted their number and confirmed that there were nine rotaries.

However, the hotel manager pointed out that the capital was relocated mainly for military reasons.

“Japanese forces at one point set up a command post in Naypyidaw. After winning independence, the Communist Party of Burma, which launched an anti-government struggle, took over the facility as their own base. A mountain range is situated from east to west in Naypyidaw, and there are rivers that are suitable for defending the area. In other words, Naypyidaw is a natural fortress,” she explained.

Than Shwe, who retired from politics in March, President Thein Sein and other dignitaries have built their residences before the eastern part of the mountain range and have reportedly dug several tunnels that lead to an eastern plain. Intelligence agencies from various countries are certain that a large-scale secret tunnel is under construction in Myanmar, sparking various speculation, including that it is for nuclear facilities.

“Shwe” is a Burmese word that means gold. “Sein,” part of the name of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, means diamond. After the United States attacked Iraq, rumors spread in Myanmar that “after diamond, the next target of the U.S. is gold.” Than Shwe, who provoked Washington by suppressing pro-democracy forces, may have feared an attack by U.S. forces.

If you travel around Myanmar, you will notice there are many universities across the country, even in small cities, although the University of Yangon and the University of Mandalay had previously been the only general universities. This is because authorities have split universities into regional entities since the student-led pro-democracy campaign gained momentum in 1988.

“The split of universities is aimed at preventing excellent students from being involved in the pro-democracy campaign. A decline in the quality of education at universities could destroy the country. The relocation of the capital is an ultimate measure to maintain order by splitting students and public servants to prevent any unrest from adversely affecting government functions,” laments the president of an IT company in Yangon.

Do Pro-Democracy forces regard the number ‘8’ as lucky?

Most of the names of areas in Naypyidaw come from words of the Pali language, which is a language used in the sutra of Theravada Buddhism that many people in Myanmar, including ethnic Burmese, believe in. This may reflect the government’s respect for the Burmese dynasty that protected Buddhism. In the military district of the city are large statues of three respected Burmese kings. Naypyidaw means the capital of a kingdom.

“Naypyidaw literally means the restoration of the Burmese dynasty,” says Khin Maung Swe, leader of the National Democratic Force.

In the era of the Burmese dynasty, there was a custom of shifting the country’s capital whenever a new king acceded to the throne.

Most of Myanmar’s military leaders are ethnic Burmese, but the military faces challenges by anti-government campaigns by armed ethnic minority groups. Those of Chinese and Indian descent control the country’s economy. The relocation of the capital can be viewed as signs that ethnic Burmese will never give the political initiative to other ethnic groups.
A Naypyidaw-based diplomat says, “High-ranking officials of Myanmar’s regime are not stupid. They made a reasonable and strategic judgment when they decided to shift the capital.”

In other words, it is probably appropriate to believe that Myanmar made the decision after considering various factors including fortune-telling.

The majority of members of pro-democracy forces in Myanmar are ethnic Burmese.

Pro-democracy forces in the country launched a general strike on Aug. 8, 1988, and Suu Kyi released her first message on the strike on Aug. 26. Two plus six is eight.

I asked Khin Maung Swe, a former member of the Central Executive Committee of National League for Democracy led by Suu Kyi, if pro-democracy forces regard eight as a lucky number.

He denied that saying, “Eight was regarded as an unlucky number in the dynasty era. Therefore, we wanted to use the figure eight many times to threaten the military regime.”

Suu Kyi laughed at the military regime’s obsession with the figure nine. However, pro-democracy forces’ use of the figure eight to fight against the government is also comical in the eyes of third parties. (By Takayuki Kasuga, Foreign News Department).

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သင့္အေၾကာင္း သင့္လုုပ္ငနး္ ေၾကာ္ျငာ သည္ေနရာမွာ ေၾကာ္ျငာႏိုုင္ပါျပီ