The waiting game - Myanmar's junta plays to win

Economist.com
January 23, 2008

IN A comic novel by Evelyn Waugh, an exasperated teacher tames his unruly class by setting an essay competition with a cash prize. Entries, he tells his rowdy students, will be judged on one criterion alone: length.

Myanmar has long been run on much the same lines. A convention set up to draft a constitution for a move to democratic rule eventually pronounced last September, 14 years after it first met. Its conclusion surprised no one: an arrangement ensuring the perpetuation of military dominance.

Playing for time in the face of demands for political reform—combined with brutally quashing of any sign of popular impatience—has proved a successful tactic. The junta seems more securely in control now than in 1990, when its representatives were trounced in an election. The army has doubled in size. It easily quelled last autumn’s monk-led popular uprising.

The junta is now using the same stalling tactics to frustrate the United Nations Security Council. Last September, despite the objections of countries such as Russia and China, which argued the country was a threat to no one other than its own people, the council voted to include the “situation in Myanmar” on its agenda.

Appalled by the army’s bloody treatment of peaceful protestors, and by the arrest of hundreds of people in an effort to thwart any renewed unrest, the council issued a statement in October calling for the release of all political prisoners. It also demanded a “genuine dialogue” with Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained opposition leader, and “all concerned parties and ethnic groups”.

It would not be true to accuse Myanmar of having done nothing at all to meet these goals, but it is perfectly fair to say that it has done nothing of any significance. It has appointed one of its ministers to “liase” with Miss Suu Kyi. They have met four times, with long gaps in between. Miss Suu Kyi’s view of the arrangement was clear from an official picture showing her looking sombre beside a beaming minister.

The UN estimates at least 4,000 people were detained during and after the protests. Many have been freed, but perhaps 500-1,000 are still locked up. Many families still do not know what has happened to their loved ones.

And these numbers do not even count the 1,100 political prisoners in detention before last September. Some of the ordinary citizens caught up in the fervour of the street protests have been allowed to go home. But anyone with a history of activism of political involvement remains inside a cruel penal system, notorious for torture.

The junta has also allowed the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Sérgio Pinheiro, back for a visit. And it has received the Security Council’s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari.

But now that Mr Gambari wants to go back, the junta has said it cannot receive him until April. In response, the Security Council on Friday “regretted the slow pace of progress so far” towards meeting its objectives.

The row over the timing of Mr Gambari’s visit shows the powerless of the UN against a regime determined not to mend its ways. It also shows that regime’s cunning: it has managed to turn a debate about the fundamental rights of its citizens into an administrative wrangle about a visa for a visiting diplomat.

As Britain’s ambassador, Mark Canning, has put it, “the name of the game” for the junta is staying off the front pages. The worldwide sympathy evoked by the “saffron revolution” made that seem a hard game to play. But these generals are past masters.