Holding the line: Burma’s junta subdues its people – and the world

By Amy Kazmin and Richard McGregor

March 26, 2008 - After violently suppressing anti-government marches last year, Burma’s ruling generals are hunt­ing a new enemy in the dilapidated city of Rangoon, zeroing in on street vendors who sell pirated DVDs. The object of the junta’s wrath is the latest Rambo film, in which the Vietnam veteran played by Sylvester Stallone battles Burmese soldiers to rescue missionaries held for assisting persecuted ethnic minorities.

Besides confiscating every copy it can find, the junta has compelled privately owned Burmese news journals to print articles ridiculing Rambo for being “so fat, with sagging breasts” and looking “like a lunatic” during fights.

Aside from the Hollywood action picture, though, not much is rattling Burma’s generals these days. Six months ago, their crackdown on the Buddhist monk-led “saffron revolt” provoked international revulsion and a clamour to push the regime to change. Today, the storm of criticism has largely passed. The junta, as firmly in power as ever, has rebuffed the pressure, making clear it intends to proceed with its own plans for Burma’s future, with or without western or United Nations approval.

After a brief moment of apparent unity, western and Asian governments are again divided on how to approach the Burmese generals. Although nearly all governments recognise the need for change in the impoverished state, they have profound differences on the reforms most necessary – and how best to foster them. “There is a philosophical difference between Asia and the west,” says Thant Myint-U, a historian and grandson of the late U Thant, the UN’s 1960s secretary-general. “The west believes in a push for democracy. But Asian governments believe in slow, gradual change in which economic change leads to an opening of political and social space.”

Asian perspectives on dealing with the generals – especially the views in neighbouring China, India and Thailand – are also coloured by regional interest in Burma’s resources, particularly its natural gas. Thailand already relies on Burmese gas to generate about 20 per cent of its electricity; Bangkok’s state oil company is negotiating another gas deal and the country is eyeing hydropower projects in Burma. For its part, Beijing is discussing deals to construct two pipelines across Burma. One would transport Middle Eastern oil from near Burma’s Andaman Sea port of Sittwe to Yunnan province, reducing Chinese reliance on crude shipments through the Straits of Malacca, while a second pipeline would supply China with Burmese natural gas.

“China’s interests are mercantilist, not political or strategic,” says Zhu Feng, a scholar at the School of International Studies at Peking University. “We need someone to press Myanmar [Burma] on the need for change [but] we cannot play that role – its not China’s style.”

After last year’s crackdown, which killed at least 31, western countries led the condemnation. But even Burma’s traditional friends in the Association of South East Asian Nations expressed dismay at the bloodshed. China, long exasperated at the junta’s failure to develop the national economy, also – at least by its own reticent standards – admonished its neighbour.

The UN Security Council subsequently called for the junta to engage in a meaningful dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning democracy advocate who is under house arrest in Rangoon, to free her and an estimated 1,800 other political prisoners and to address the “political, economic, humanitarian and human rights issues that are the concerns of its people”. Beijing, the regime’s closest ally, pushed the generals to allow Ibrahim Gambari, the UN’s special envoy, to visit Burma to foster discussions on political change.

But the world has since been divided by the generals’ surprise declaration of a May referendum on a controversial new constitution, which the generals say will lay the foundation for a “discipline-flourishing democracy” suitable for Burma’s multi-ethnic society. Burmese exiles and opposition groups, as well as many western governments, have denounced the charter – which would in all likelihood prevent Ms Suu Kyi and other dissidents from entering politics – as an attempt merely to legalise military rule. Yet some south-east Asian governments have praised the referendum and the promise of elections in 2010 as welcome steps towards reform. Wang Guangya, China’s ambassador to the UN, also called it “real progress”, though he conceded “improvements” could be made.

As Beijing prepares to host the Olympics, its worries about an eruption of fresh protests in Burma – which would highlight China’s close ties to the regime – have also eased, amid the surface calm in Burma and Beijing’s own trouble in Tibet. But the opening of the Beijing Olympics on August 8 coincides with the 20th anniversary of the start of Burma’s previous big uprising, during which soldiers killed thousands of unarmed protesters. “Beijing’s primary concern was that there be no repeat of [last] September in Burma before the Olympics and especially no demonstrations in Rangoon marking the 1988 uprising,” says a UN official who monitors Burma. “Now that they see these generals can keep things under control in the short term, there is less interest in pushing for change. They see they can keep a lid on things.”

The US and UK remain focused on pushing for substantive political dialogue bet­ween the generals and Ms Suu Kyi, but appear to have few tools to put pressure on the junta. While anti-regime activists press for more punitive economic sanctions, Asian governments’ unwavering rejection of such measures would be likely to render further western sanctions ineffective, al­though Asian capitals offer few alternative ideas of how to foster change. “They throw up their hands in exasperation and say ‘what can we do?’, which is just what the military wants,” says one western diplomat based in Rangoon. In any case, China in­sists sanctions do not work. “If there are heavy sanctions, then the junta will not reform,” says Zhai Kun, of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

China appears to hope the new charter will lay a sufficient foundation to facilitate change along the lines of its own economy or that of Vietnam, which allow for fast development while tight political controls are maintained. “If we were to intervene we should have a goal, but what is China’s goal?” asks Zhang Yunling of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “The western countries’ goal is very clear. It is democracy. But for China it is stability.”

Aware of these divisions, Burma’s generals appear confident of their ability to ward off external pressure. “The unprecedented level of concern by the international community has run into the sand,” says an academic who monitors Burma. “By demonstrating the limited options available to the international community, it may have encouraged the view among some Burmese generals that they can’t be touched.”

Indeed, since the protests the generals have made no concessions that might mollify western critics, despite offers of dramatically increased aid if the generals undertake a credible reform process. The generals have also rejected nearly all requests made since September by the UN Security Council as well as by Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general, and Mr Gambari.

With Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest, as she has been for 12 of the past 18 years, the junta hunts, locks up and prosecutes dissidents. Talks between her and the generals have gone nowhere after Than Shwe, head of the junta, demanded that she first denounce sanctions. The UN’s resident representative in Rangoon was expelled in November for stating the seemingly obvious – that deepening poverty underlay the September protests.

Since announcing their constitutional referendum, the generals have also spurned UN offers of technical advice and international election monitors. Blaming sanctions for the people’s hardships, the generals rebuffed a UN idea to set up a commission to study Burma’s economy and recommend policies to alleviate poverty. After a trip to Burma this month, his third since September, Mr Gambari expressed frustration that his visit had not yielded “any immediate tangible outcome”.

All along, the US and the UK have been appealing to China to use its leverage over the generals to urge change. Gordon Brown, British prime minister, pressed the case with Wen Jiabao, his Chinese counterpart, and President Hu Jintao during a recent visit. But little has emerged.

Mr Zhai says the west overstates Beijing’s influence on the highly nationalistic generals. Even on the economy, he says, China’s advice to them falls on deaf ears. China has even said that it – like the rest of the world – was caught by surprise by the generals’ 2005 move to a new capital city called Naypyidaw.

China, which shares a long border with Burma, has reason to worry about the junta’s poor governance. Its companies are highly active in Burma, mainly in natural resource exploitation. Beijing also wants the regime to step up border policing and do more to fight drug trafficking. In recent years, large numbers of Chinese migrants, mainly petty traders, have also drifted into Burma – displacing Burmese, especially in urban centres. This influx, coupled with perceptions that Beijing is propping up the junta, has fuelled resentment, raising the prospect of violence against the arrivals if frustrations boil over.

“Anti-Chinese sentiment is growing in Burma – and they know the generals can’t protect them,” says one western diplomat. As another puts it: “The Chinese know this place is still an accident waiting to happen.” Mr Zhai, too, recognises that “there are some sentiments against China among the common people”. But like other Chinese scholars, he says China’s importance to Burma is such that Beijing could forge strong ties with whomever is in power.

With the UN process at a standstill, the generals’ political makeover may force the west to rethink its approach. “The referendum and elections will create a new political reality,” says the UN official. Mr Thant, author of The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma and himself formerly with the UN, argues that the constitution, whatever its shortcomings, could provide opportunities to re-engage with Burma. It would “create a much more complex decision-making structure – and that is the first step away from dictatorship”, he says. “If that is coupled with economic reform and the economy growing, you have the beginnings of a different political system.”

Yet Burma’s new constitution may simply mean the perpetuation of military rule in fresh garb – a matter of concern to both the west and China. “The Chinese genuinely do not think the government here is capable of delivering the kind of Burma they want to see,” says a western diplomat in Rangoon. “The question for them, and all of us, is how do we get from where we are now to the better-run but still pretty authoritarian state that is likely to follow?” Answers so far are thin on the ground.

Source: Financial Times