Saboi Jum’s Shalom imparts poll training

Totally in consonance with the Burmese military junta, Rev. Dr. Saboi Jum’s Shalom Foundation is imparting training to local people for the general elections and the 2008 constitution. Dr. Jum had mediated between the junta and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) for the ceasefire agreement.


Staff members of the Shalom Foundation also known as the Nyein Foundation are training hundreds of civilian elders and youth on the election since 2009 December under the topic of “Civic Education”, said a source who attended a training session.

“The training started last year December and saw to teaching mainly six subjects,” said an attendee.
The training is about the ‘Role of a Citizen, Good Governance, Different kinds of Constitution, Democracy, Communication and Facilitation and Voter Education.’

“There was another round of training from May 10 to 15 at the Shalom centre in Myitkyina where around 30 youth from Laiza (Sino-Burma border), the Headquarters of KIO participated,” said the source.

Every single session of the training was for six days with 30 trainees. The training was shifted to Myitkyina the capital of Kachin State in March after it was conducted in Rangoon former capital of Burma. It has been providing training to local people from the entire country.

The training was mostly attended by the leaders of the townships, villages and youth and it was held at the places where Shalom Foundation has its projects.
“It is good for us because it is something different,” said the trainees in Myitkyina.

Kachin Baptist pastor Rev. Dr. Saboi Jum is widely criticized by Kachin people for his role as a mediator and his close relationship with the regime generals.

The former General Secretary of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) Saboi Jum and his brother Hkun Myat have been looked after by the junta’s generals in terms of business interests in name of public service after the ceasefire agreement in 1994.

Saboi Jum continues as a mediator between the junta and KIO for transforming its armed wing to the Burma Army-controlled Border Guard Force (BGF). The KIO, one of strongest ethnic armed groups in military-ruled still refuses to accept the BGF.

He is advising and pressurizing the KIO to accept the BGF and on May 9, he lambasted the KIO for refusing the BGF proposal during a worship service in the Shatapru Kachin Baptist Church in Myitkyina.

He was granted 5,000 acres of land between Myitkyina and Bhamo by the Northern Burma’s Kachin State military commander, where common people cannot get even one acre of land.