Every trick in the book

By Benedict Rogers

Burma's new constitution will be put to a referendum next month.
A more blatant sham is hard to imagine

April 13, 2008 - Next month, the people of Burma will vote in a referendum on a new constitution - the first opportunity to go to the polls since Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won elections 18 years ago. But in 1990 Burma's military regime was shocked that despite all its efforts to undermine the opposition and intimidate the voters, it still lost the election. This time, the junta is determined to get its way - and is using every trick in the book and more.

A more blatant sham is hard to imagine. When the regime rejected the UN's request for international monitors during the referendum, it abandoned any iota of credibility. What kind of referendum is it where those who campaign against the process can be jailed for at least three years?

Millions of Burmese are disfranchised. Buddhist monks and nuns, who number 500,000, are denied the vote - a price for their courageous demonstrations last September which were brutally crushed. Religious leaders from other faiths are also excluded. More than 500,000 internally-displaced people on the run in the jungles of eastern Burma, as well as the 700,000 Muslim Rohingyas, treated as non-citizens and therefore stateless, are banned from participating. Millions living in conflict zones in the ethnic states, as well as refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries and exiles further afield, will also be excluded.

The junta's game-plan is clearly to rubber-stamp its new constitution which, in turn, will enshrine military rule. The constitution drafting process completely excluded Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD and major representatives of the ethnic groups. Most of the members of parliament elected in 1990 are in prison or exile, and Suu Kyi is in her 12th year of house arrest. The National Convention, which drafted the guidelines for the constitution, involved no debate among the handpicked delegates, and none of the proposals made by the few ethnic representatives who did participate were adopted. Law 5/96 imposed prison terms of up to 20 years for discussing the constitution process.

The end product is a constitution which offers no improvement in human rights and democracy - and simply enshrines military rule. The commander-in-chief of the army will appoint 25% of the national legislators. He will also appoint the defence minister, who will report to him. The army chief can seize power at any point if he happens to believe that national security is threatened. There will be no independent judiciary, and the constitution cannot be amended for 10 years.

Political prisoners will be barred from contesting elections, and the president must be a person with military experience who has not married a foreigner. Suu Kyi, therefore, is by definition ruled out.

The junta hopes this charade will lull the international community into a false sense that it is reforming, and so pressure for change will ease. The international community, including Burma's neighbours, must not fall for this. If the regime continues to ignore calls from the UN for dialogue with the democracy movement, tough action should follow. The UN secretary-general himself should take charge of Burma policy. Burma's best friends - China, India, Russia, Thailand and Singapore - should end their policies of appeasement. A universal arms embargo should be imposed. And the UN security council should refer the generals to the International Court for investigation into crimes against humanity.

This is a regime guilty of every possible human rights violation, including a campaign of ethnic cleansing involving the widespread, systematic use of rape as a weapon of war, forced labour, the use of human minesweepers and the destruction of more than 3,200 villages in eastern Burma since 1996. More than 70,000 children have been taken off the streets and forced to join the Burma Army - the highest proportion of child soldiers in the world. More than 1,800 political prisoners are in jail, subjected to horrific torture. It is time to bring this catalogue of horrors - under-reported and overlooked for too long - to an end.

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