Burma needs to learn from past, says president
'Take lessons from the losses'
Burma's president said Sunday his country needs to learn from the violence and instability that has wracked the Southeast Asian nation over the last two years if it is to overcome the challenge of democratization.
Thein Sein spoke in a radio address broadcast to mark the start a day earlier of the Buddhist New Year that is celebrated by revelers across Southeast Asia with friendly water fights.
Thein Sein, a former general, took office two years ago after the country, also known as Myanmar, long ruling junta stepped down. He has since led an unprecedented transition toward democratic rule, releasing political prisoners, easing censorship and signing cease-fire deals with all but one of the nation's rebel groups.
But the country has also been plagued by a war with ethnic Kachin rebels in the north, sectarian violence in western Rakhine state, and anti-Muslim pogroms in central Myanmar last month that left 43 dead in the city of Meikhtila and turned whole Muslim neighbourhoods to ashen ruins.
Suu Kyi visits Japan
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was greeted by dozens of flag-waving well-wishers, including people from her home country, as she arrived in Japan on Saturday for a weeklong visit.
Suu Kyi is widely respected in Japan, a place that holds special feelings for the lawmaker and National League for Democracy party leader, who endured nearly two decades of house arrest, because of her historical ties to Japan.
She is scheduled to go to Kyoto in central Japan, where she studied at a university nearly three decades ago. Her father, independence hero Gen. Aung San, also spent some time in Japan in the 1940s.
"We have achieved successes that we had not hoped for and also experienced shocking and saddening events we had not expected," Thein Sein said. But "during this long road toward democracy, we have to sustain our successes and take lessons from the losses, and be prepared to face the challenges ahead."
Meanwhile, Nobel laureate and Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is spending the new year in Japan, where she met with hundreds of her compatriots living there. During her week-long visit, she is expected to drum up aid funding in her meetings with government officials there.
For many decades, Myanmar's four-day New Year festival, known as Thingyan, has marked one of the few times people here could cut loose under the watchful eye of their repressive leaders — albeit with squirt guns and high-powered hoses used to soak civilian targets.
The water has symbolically been used to cleanse past ills, and Thein Sein said people this year should use it to "cleanse black spots like the clashes, conflicts and instabilities" which plagued the nation.
Thein Sein's government imposed a state of emergency in the wake of the violence in Meikhtila last month, deploying the army to restore order.