Myanmar will hold by-elections tomorrow, with the country’s democracy icon Ms Aung San Suu Kyi running as a candidate. The country is slowly opening up to political reform, tourism and more foreign investments. The country, located between India, China and Thailand, has been isolated from the international community after decades of military rule. The Enquirer releases some glimpses of the nation once seen as the Southeast Asia’s most promising country back in the 1950s.

Buddhists pray to one of the many Buddhist statues in Shwedagon Pagoda. The temple is a rallying point for many political uprisings for Burma such as the 1988 democracy uprising and the saffron revolution in 2007.

Buddhists lighting candles as part of their prayers at the country's holiest temple. Buddhism is followed by 89 percent of Myanmar's population and it plays an important role in the spiritual life of the people.

Elaborate roof designs at Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon. Many temples in the country are covered with gold leaf, showing the amount invested in temples from a people not known for having abundant wealth.

A road sign and posters in Yangon downtown. China, Myanmar's neighbour up north, has considerable cultural influence in the country. Mandarin lessons are becoming more common.

A Burmese university student at Inle Lake, Myanmar. University students were once a potent force in the country, leading demonstrations in 1988 that ended the rule of Burmese dictator Ne Win. However, they were suppressed by Ne Win's military successors. Today, the country's top university, Yangon University, is open for only a few selected Masters programmes.

International brands are slowing making its way into the country. In downtown Yangon, Giordano has opened a small outlet.

Women in Shan State travelling on an open air lorry. Few in the country can afford their own automobile.

Many vehicles in Myanmar are old. Lorries and pickups are common modes of transport. Many lorries lack a tailboard too.

A villager and his children at Inle Lake, Myanmar.

Children are exited about visitors coming to their village. Shan State, Myanmar.

A farmer in Shan State working on his field. Agriculture is still the primary means of earning money for the majority of citizens in this country.

A farmer surveys her farm located in the hilly regions of Shan State.

Farmers transport firewood on bullock carts. Myanmar has large reserves of virgin forest and it is a prime source of teak wood.

During the closing minutes of 2011, Burmese crowds release hot air balloons into the air to celebrate the New Year.

These photographs are taken on a field trip to Myanmar organised by the NTU Environmental Endeavour (EE2). More photographs can be found at the author’s photo blog.

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As the dust of Singapore’s general election settles, a forgotten side of Singapore continues to wage a quiet, uphill battle for change. Our guest writer, Kirsten Han, shares some recent developments about the death penalty for drugs in Singapore.

“I feel that… I…” Joanne Cheong breaks off, at a lost for words. She takes a moment, then blurts out, “I want them to give my brother back to me.”

Hearing these words made me flashback to about eight months ago, as Yong Vui Fung walked up the road towards the Istana clutching a folder of petition signatures to be submitted to the President. “What do you want to say to the President?” we asked her then.

“I hope he will not take my brother’s life away,” she said.

Both Joanne and Vui Fung are Malaysian citizens, one living in Johor Bahru, the other in Sabah. Both of them come from broken families, their parents divorced and estranged. But above that, there is something else that ties them together.

Both of them have older brothers who are on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking. And by the end of 2011, both of them might be grieving the deaths of these brothers.

Dying for drugs in Singapore

Singapore has always prided itself for its tough stance on drugs and drug trafficking. According to the Misuse of Drugs Act, if one is caught with above a stipulated amount of a controlled substance (such as 15g of heroin), one will face the death penalty.

This is a stance that the government has often justified as a “trade-off” to keep Singapore relatively drug-free.

The Singaporean public has largely bought into this line of reasoning, and many feel that the death penalty for drug trafficking is necessary for the safety of the nation.

However, there are a few issues of which the Singaporean population remains largely unaware:

1 . The Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) functions mainly on presumption clauses. For example, if someone is caught with drugs in his bag, the MDA presumes that the person knew that he had drugs in his bag, and presumes that he was carrying these drugs for the purposes of trafficking.

The onus is then on the person to prove that he did not know that he was carrying the drug, and that he was not carrying it for the purposes of drug trafficking.

This effectively turns the usual “innocent until proven guilty” scenario into a “guilty until proven innocent” one.

2 . The death penalty under the MDA is mandatory. Once the judge finds the accused unable to rebut the presumption clauses, he has no choice but to mete out the death sentence.

The judge has no discretion to consider any mitigating circumstances.

3 . Studies done in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States have shown that there is no concrete evidence to say that the death penalty actually works as deterrence.

Hong Kong, a small city somewhat similar to Singapore, does not have the death penalty, and yet the crime rate is about the same in both cities.

Therefore, it is actually inaccurate for the Singapore government to justify the death penalty as a form of deterrence.

Yong Vui Kong's family kneeling before the Istana, 24 August 2010

Vui Fung’s brother: Yong Vui Kong

Yong Vui Kong was 19 years old when he was arrested in Singapore in 2007. He was charged with trafficking 47.27g of heroin.

At the time of his arrest, Vui Kong was illiterate. He had been raised by a single mother in a poor family, living in his grandfather’s plantation in a remote part of Sabah. At the age of 12 he had run away to Kuala Lumpur in the hopes of building a better life, and had fallen in with gangs.

The gang’s “Big Brother” then asked Vui Kong to begin delivering “gifts” to people in Malaysia and Singapore. Vui Kong eventually found out that these “gifts” were drugs, but his “Big Brother” told him that the penalty would not be very heavy, and that he would be able to earn a lot of money for his mother.

By the time Vui Kong found out about the mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking, it was too late.

Although he was due to be executed in December 2009, Vui Kong’s lawyer M Ravi managed to obtain not one, but two stays of execution for him, bringing up various challenges in Singapore’s courts.

However, all appeals have since been dismissed. The last appeal, asking for a judicial review of the President’s powers in the clemency process, was dismissed in April 2011. The Court of Appeal ruled that the President does not have the power to grant clemency, and has to act according to the advise of the Cabinet.

Vui Kong now has about two more months to submit his clemency petition.

The Save Vui Kong Campaign has launched the debate over the death penalty into the public arena in Malaysia. The Malaysian mainstream media has picked up his story, and there has been a large amount of support for him from members of the public.

In August 2010, his family submitted 109,346 petition signatures to the Istana, asking for Vui Kong’s death sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment. After Vui Kong submits his clemency petition, Singapore’s President S R Nathan will have three months to give a reply.

Chun Yin's family at the forum they organised in Johor Jaya, 3 May 2011

Joanne’s brother: Cheong Chun Yin

Cheong Chun Yin was arrested in Singapore in 2008, and charged with trafficking in approximately 2.7kg of heroin from Burma.

Chun Yin claimed that he had been persuaded by a regular customer of his pasar malam stall, “Lau De”, to smuggle gold bars from Burma in to Singapore for the purposes of tax evasion. Upon receiving the suitcase in Burma, he had checked it and felt that solid objects had been hidden in the lining. He thus assumed that these objects were the gold bars and thought no more of it.

When he arrived at Changi Airport, Chun Yin handed the suitcase over to a woman, and left in a taxi, believing his job to be done. However, he was arrested when alighting from a taxi in Arab Street. He was then taken to a flat in Toa Payoh where it was revealed to him that the suitcase he carried had contained heroin instead of gold.

While under interrogation, Chun Yin gave the authorities a description of “Lau De”, as well as both the phone numbers he had used. However, the Central Narcotics Bureau, or CNB, did not make any effort to investigate this man, or even to trace the phone numbers.

In his written judgement, the trial judge Choo Han Teck stated that “[i]t was immaterial that the CNB did not make adequate efforts to trace ‘Lau De’ or check on his cell-phones.” He disbelieved Chun Yin’s story, and handed down the mandatory death penalty. The Court of Appeal upheld the sentence in October 2010.

Chun Yin’s family, together with the help of activists in Malaysia and Singapore, have kicked off a campaign calling for a stay of execution, and for his case to be re-opened and re-investigated. On 27 April 2011, they submitted over 8000 petition signatures to the Istana, pleading with the Singapore government not to execute Chun Yin.

With a reply to his clemency petition (the final stage of any death penalty case) expected any day now, it is a last-ditch attempt by a desperate family to cling on to hope.

'Drugs and the Death Penalty' forum, 23 April 2011

An uphill battle

Since the very beginning the anti-death penalty campaign in Singapore has been an uphill battle. The government staunchly defends its stance, and many Singaporeans are of the view that it is a necessary evil to keep the country safe.

With the mainstream media in Singapore largely controlled by the government and unwilling to pay much attention to the issue of the death penalty, it is difficult for there to be any debate or discussion in the public arena here. Most of the campaign efforts have been limited to the Internet and social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

But there are signs of increasing support among the populace. Events held at Speakers’ Corner in Hong Lim Park, such as ‘Give Yong Vui Kong a Second Chance’, have had decent turnouts. A recent forum, ‘Drugs and the Death Penalty’, was held to a full house, with many new faces turning up to listen to panellists speak about the death penalty in Singapore and Malaysia.

The families and friends of death row inmates, too, have stepped up as lead figures in the campaign. At ‘Drugs and the Death Penalty’, six families of death row inmates turned up to support each other and share their experience, which is unprecedented in the history of

The anti-death penalty campaign in Singapore

Vui Kong’s family have been instrumental in the campaign for a second chance for him, especially in his hometown of Sandakan, Sabah. Chun Yin’s family have also organised their own forum in Johor Bahru, held in the very pasar malam where Chun Yin used to work, to mobilise their community in support of the campaign to save his life.

The anti-death penalty campaign is a difficult one. Each case is taken on with the implicit knowledge that we will probably not win. And yet we activists, together with the families and friends of the inmates, press on, fuelled by the belief that the death penalty does not work, and that one day change will come.

Kirsten Han has been involved in the anti-death penalty campaign in Singapore since early 2010. She is the co-founder of We Believe In Second Chances, a campaign focusing on people on death row, and is now actively pushing three cases: Yong Vui Kong, Cheong Chun Yin, and Noor Atiqah, a Singaporean single mother on death row in Malaysia.

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Our photographer Wong Yuntian was at Hougang stadium to capture the celebratory mood of Workers’ Party supporters yesterday night. They filled about three-quarters of the stadium and waited till nearly 3am for the final results. They did not wait in vain.

WP supporters wait nervously for the results to be announced. While originally scheduled at 10pm, the release of election results was delayed because of recounts in several closely-fought constituencies.

WP supporters wave blue party flags at the Hougang stadium. Founded in 1957, the party's traditional colour is blue because it wants to represent the blue-collar working class. In recent years, however, they begun to attract more academics and corporate talent.

Mainstream newspapers print out electoral battle maps for residents to refer to. Singapore's electoral districts change their names and boundaries frequently, leading to confusion among voters. The ruling party, People's Action Party (PAP), has said that changes reflect demographic changes, while the opposition accuses them of gerrymandering.

Technology has played a large role in Singapore's 2011 General Elections. Many people have used social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to get the latest updates. In addition, Apple products such as iPhone and iPad are also used to capture special moments at the polls.

A rising star in the WP. Hougang candidate Yaw Shin Leong replaces his mentor Low Thia Khiang as MP for Hougang. Mr Low has led a team to contest in Aljunied GRC.

At 210am, the results for the 5-member constituency of Aljunied GRC were officially out. WP supporters went wild with joy when they learnt of this historic breakthrough. The WP won around 54% of the valid votes cast, defeating the incumbent PAP team.

WP candidates for Aljunied GRC greet their supporters after winning their seats. It was a sweet victory for Sylvia Lim, the WP chairman who has been walking on Aljunied grounds every week since the last election.

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When late calligrapher and poet Pan Shou called for NTU to be renamed simply as Nanyang University in 1998, he saw it as a way to “quieten the hearts of many”, reflecting a desire among some Nantah alumni to see the old name of their alma mater brought back.

The remark was made in Mr Pan’s acceptance speech for an honorary degree to recognize his contributions to the arts in Singapore, and to Nantah, which he served as the first General Secretary in its early days.

However, on the same day, both then NTU president Cham Tao Soon and the then Education Minister Teo Chee Hean present at the ceremony told reporters that they saw no need for a name change. They felt that NTU was a name already well-known in the world, and the word “technological” reflected its strength and focus well.

Mr Pan passed away a year later, before he could see current NTU president Su Guanning express plans to drop the “T” in NTU by 2005.

Shortly after taking office in 2003, Dr Su had mentioned in an interview with the Straits Times of his desire to revive the “fighting spirit” in the founding of Nantah by adopting its name.

Yet, in a dramatic turn of events, Dr Su announced a year later that he would put the renaming on hold until NTU becomes a full-fledged, comprehensive university. The matter has not been brought up again.

History of Nantah

Nanyang University, or Nantah, was established in 1955 and merged with the University of Singapore (SU) in 1980 to form the National University of Singapore (NUS).

However, most Nantah alumni saw it as a forced closure of their alma mater. The bitterness ran deep, as the 12,000 Nantah graduates felt marginalised by a society that did not recognize their degrees. Many of them were unable to find jobs, or were given little pay compared to SU graduates.

In addition, Nantah was built using donations from Chinese from all walks of life – including trishaw riders, cabaret girls and washerwomen – to realise a dream of setting up a Chinese university in Singapore. This added to the deep sense of loss Nantah alumni felt when they saw an English medium technological institution set up where their mother school used to be.

Nanyang Technological Institute, which opened on the former Nantah campus in 1981, was expanded to become Nanyang Technological University 10 years later.

Proposed name change stirs alumni

The proposal to drop the “T” by Dr Su Guanning was endorsed by Mr R. Sinnakarupan, president of the then 75,000-member NTU Alumni Club. For more than a year since January 2003, news in the media reported only NTU’s steps in pushing towards reviving Nantah, setting 2005 as the target date.

Yet, it was not mentioned that there were dissenting voices from various alumni, who took to the Internet to voice their objection.

A Nantah graduate, who currently resides in Canada, conducted an online straw poll of 50 alumni, of which all but one saw NTU as a separate entity from Nantah and not a resurrection of the former Chinese university.

The pollster, Dr Choo Eng Ung, also posted a declaration online with three other alumni to state that there is “only one real history of Nanyang University” – that it was shut down in 1980 and has ceased to exist.

The declaration, supported by 72 Nantah alumni, sought to “stop NTU from using the exact name ‘Nanyang University’”, in order to “protect and preserve the integrity of the true legendary history of our alma mater Nanyang University”.

Various Nantah graduates interviewed by the Enquirer, like Mr Chong Wing Hong, echoed the views of the online voices. “Most alumni, including me, see Nanyang University as having officially ceased to exist at age 25,” Mr. Chong said.

“A group of alumni thought that NTU should be ‘linked’ with Nanyang University. But Dr Su tried it, and it didn’t work out,” added the senior writer for Lianhe Zaobao.

“NTU is a new and independent university,” said Mr Tan Hock Lay, another Nantah alumnus. “The cultural, social and academic environment of NTU and Nantah are also largely different, so there is no point in bringing up a name change.”

Another objection to using the name Nanyang University was its historical baggage and the possibility of rekindling old grievances Nantah alumni experienced during the “forced closure”, said Mr Chong, the senior writer for Lianhe Zaobao.

This sentiment is reflected by another alumnus, who wished to remain anonymous. He and his Nantah schoolmates were so unhappy being viewed as NTU Alumni that they “tore up NTU letters asking for donations every year”.

“There is no harm continuing using the name ‘Nanyang Technological University’,” said Mr Chong. “The Massachusetts University in the USA is still called Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet it has a strong humanities and social sciences faculty, and has produced many excellent graduates. To change the name is not an issue.”

President of Nanyang University Alumni Academic Society, Dr. Choong Chow Siong, admitted that he was among the minority of Nantah graduates who also sees himself as an alumnus of NTU.

“There are two types of alumni of NTU – those who graduated from the university itself, the other established under the legislation,” Dr Choong said. Under a parliamentary act in 1995, the Nantah alumni rolls were transferred from NUS to NTU.

“Everyone has already deep set perception about what happened,” said Dr Choong, referring to those Nantah alumni who do not share his outlook as a dual alumnus of Nantah and NTU. “There is no need to actively push for a change in view, because it would be a 180-degrees change, one that is not easy to achieve.”

As for the continued possibility of a name change, Dr Choong said it is an important decision that should be made by stakeholders of NTU and Nantah together.

Name change shelved, for now

In July 2004, Dr Su suddenly announced a change of plan, saying renaming would come only after NTU becomes a full-fledged varsity. The move was backed by then Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan. This time, there was no timeline.

It was unclear whether objections from various Nantah alumni were the cause of what happened. Yet, six years after Dr Su’s proposed name change, it seems as if renaming NTU has already dropped off the radar.

During a global reunion of Nantah graduates in Beijing on 17 October last year, a discussion found that while reviving the “Nantah spirit” continues to be among hopes of alumni, the option of renaming NTU is no longer within consideration.

More importantly, NTU Provost Bertil Andersson said in an interview with The Enquirer that NTU would retain its technological focus, a theme that fit well with what Dr Su said during his speech at NTU’s 2006 convocation.

“Prime Minister Lee asked if we aspire to be Harvard or MIT. You will not be surprised that the answer is MIT,” Prof Su said as he addressed the freshly minted NTU graduates. “Among the three public universities in Singapore, we are the only science and technology university approximating MIT, whose excellence we want to emulate.”

When pressed for a response on the renaming issue, the university replied with “no comments”, and The Enquirer has been unable to get a response from Dr Su himself thus far.

Perhaps Mr Pan Shou’s wish may never be realized, but it appears a sizeable group of Nantah alumni — who do not want Nantah’s name to be used for what they feel is an unrelated entity — want to keep it that way.

With engineering at its core, NTU should be the university with exciting interfaces between different disciplines rather than follow a comprehensive model like Harvard or Berkeley said NTU Provost Bertil Andersson.

“There’s a lot of new knowledge today and what students require is inter-disciplinarity,” he told the Enquirer in a recent interview.

“No one wants to be just an engineer; no one wants to be just a scientist. Young people today want to have a broader base; they want to look at the totality and to understand more things.”

And NTU’s strength lies in its ability to be a university “based upon engineering and science, but having these interfaces”.

For example, combining engineering with biology creates new devices and biomaterial while engineering with business is “very important for the industry”, Prof Andersson explained.

About half of the current university undergraduate population are engineering students, and the university has marketed itself as one which offers a well-rounded global education with a distinctive edge in science and technology, according to its website.

In a speech at NTU’s 50th anniversary celebration four years ago, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong challenged NTU to choose between the Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) model.

“Both are outstanding institutions. But whereas Harvard is strong in all disciplines, MIT builds its reputation on its Science and Engineering schools, even though its Humanities and Social Sciences departments are world class,” PM Lee said. “NTU has to choose between these two models. You can aspire to be either like Harvard or MIT, but you cannot aspire to be both.”

If NTU were to become the MIT of the East, its name should stick added Prof Andersson, using the Ivy League in the United States as a comparison.

“If you look at the Nobel prizes in the last 50 years after World War II, which universities have the most Nobel prizes?” said Prof Andersson, currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Nobel Foundation.

“It’s Harvard – it’s a comprehensive university. No 2 is Berkeley, it’s a comprehensive university. And No 3 is Oxford, Cambridge, also comprehensive.”

However, in the last 15 years MIT, Stanford and Caltech are first, second and third respectively with Harvard ninth on the list, he said to prove his point.

“Many of these universities have a “T” in their names. MIT is not just engineering; it also has humanities, so it’s also an interdisciplinary university but the engineering is in the center,” said Prof Andersson, adding that comprehensive universities may be too diluted to really concentrate on their research efforts.

Hence there’s no reason for NTU to drop the “T” from its name. “The ‘N’ is for Nanyang, the ‘T’ is for Technological, the ‘U’ is for University – I think everyone has its share,” he said. “And then the ‘T’ stands for the core of the university.”