Myanmar: Immovable vs irresistible

Myanmar: Immovable vs irresistible

Forty-nine years ago today, on July 19, 1947, gunmen burst
into a meeting of the Burmese cabinet and assassinated Aung San,
the man who had already negotiated for independence from the
British in 1948, and who was negotiating for national unity with
Burma's ethnic minorities. Aung San died along with six of his
ministers and two of his aides. Whether as a factionally divided
democracy in the 1950s and early 1960s, or as a harsh military
dictatorship ever since, the promise of a united and dynamic
Burma has proved elusive. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin
reports that the frustrations are still far from over.

HONG KONG (JP): A little over a year ago, when Aung San Suu
Kyi was released from six years' house arrest, it was commonplace
to refer to her as "Burma's Mandela". Suu Kyi had been put under
house arrest in 1989, but the party which she leads still won a
comprehensive victory in the 1990 general election. The phrase
"Burma's Mandela" implied the widely-held assumption last year
that she was being released by an illegitimate government which
recognized that it had no choice but to negotiate with her.

After all, when Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years'
imprisonment it was by a government which knew it had to give in
to domestic and external pressure, and negotiate with its former
prisoner over a transfer of power. So far, the military junta
which calls itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) has not clearly demonstrated any similar such recognition
vis-a-vis Aung San Suu Kyi.

So the 29th annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) will be
taking place in Jakarta as the struggle between the Burmese
irresistible force, the petite but powerful Aung San Suu Kyi, and
the Myanmarese immovable object, SLORC, attains new levels of
intensity.

I am using the different national names carefully. While
"Myanmar" is used colloquially to signify the whole country, its
official use was decreed by SLORC after it prolonged itself in
power after the 1990 general election, which SLORC itself had
helped organize and which resulted in a never-honored landslide
win for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League For Democracy (NLD).

While "Burma" indicates only one of the nation's many ethnic
groups, and is a reminder of the unfulfilled pursuit of national
unity ever since the assassination of Aung San on July 19, 1947,
(just when he seemed to be on the brink of achieving it), Aung
San Suu Kyi still uses the name Burma. For her to use "Myanmar,"
would be to accept the dictates of an illegitimate government.

The fact that Suu Kyi's national popularity will ultimately
prove irresistible is not yet self-evident. Those who naively
labeled Burma to be "the South Africa of the 1990s" were
premature in their judgment.

The 1988 military massacres of democracy dissidents in Burma
received a tiny fraction of the publicity accorded to the
comparable Beijing Massacre in 1989. SLORC's disdain for its own
electoral processes has similarly escaped condemnation from many
quarters.

But gradually Myanmar's negative image is making a wider
impact. Reports of Myanmar slave labor working on military-backed
projects are gaining in credibility. Several well-known
multinational companies have already felt enough pressure to make
them withdraw from the Myanmar marketplace. Now the threat of
consumer boycotts has persuaded two major brewing firms,
Carlsberg and Heineken, to follow suit. Human rights activists
are gradually sharpening their focus on the Southeast Asian
state.

The words of Heineken's chief executive Karel Vuursteen
suggest that while Suu Kyi is not yet in Mandela's position, she
could be before very long. "Public opinion and issues surrounding
this market have changed to a degree that could have an adverse
effect on our brand and corporate reputation," he said.

The fact that SLORC sees itself as immovable has manifest
itself recently in several ways.

The docile and totally controlled Myanmar press has been
calling for the banning of all foreign magazines still using the
offending word "Burma."

The SLORC still shows no signs of accepting the inevitable --
that it can only achieve legitimacy by negotiating with the
person who won the election which SLORC itself organized, and
cannot therefore brand as unfair.

Instead, the controlled Myanmar press has been stepping up its
attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi, calling for her expulsion since she
is a "tool" of foreigners. The fact that Aung San Suu Kyi is
married to a British national is held, by SLORC, to be a sin.
The fact that she is the daughter of Aung San is never mentioned.

These tirades took a new twist on July 10 as the controlled
press linked Suu Kyi's expulsion to any improvement of relations
with the United States.

"If we are going to discuss matters of mutual benefit (with
the U.S.)," a widely-carried and obviously officially-sponsored
commentary said, "it will be necessary to close down the soap
opera on University Avenue.... The puppet princess and her
director who manipulates from behind the curtain should be
withdrawn from the Myanmar stage."

The "soap opera" is, of course, the only dissent still visible
in Burma, the regular speeches which Suu Kyi delivers from the
wall of her home on University Avenue to the thousands of
citizens who still have the courage to turn up.

Apart from SLORC's angry words, there are its worrying deeds.
First, the arrest of 262 NLD delegates when Suu Kyi held a party
conference recently. Some were released after the event, but
around a hundred are still in detention.

Next, at that conference the NLD decided to go ahead and draft
its proposed constitution since SLORC was not inviting NLD's
participation in the constitution which the military wants to
impose on the country. Now SLORC has made the "crime" of drafting
a constitution other than their "official" one punishable by 20
years' imprisonment. Suu Kyi has not backed away from her own
drafting plans. The SLORC has thus given itself the excuse it may
feel it needs for incarcerating Aung San Suu Kyi for a second
time.

Third, there was the imprisonment and death of the businessman
James Leander Nichols, an Anglo-Burmese businessman who was also
the honorary consul for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and
Switzerland.

Nichols' crime, for which he was sentenced to three years'
imprisonment, was the possession of unauthorized fax and
telephone machines in his home. SLORC said he died of a heart
attack.

But Nichol's real offense was that he was a friend and
supporter of Suu Kyi, and the suspicion grows that he almost
certainly died in prison as a result of torture.

Illegitimate authoritarian regimes often demonstrate their
weakness even as they try to appear strong -- and this incident
appears to be a classic example of that tendency. A regime with a
bad human rights record really ought to try to avoid offending
the strong human rights consciousness in Scandinavia.

SLORC, seemingly unable to control its bully-boys, ignored
this elemental rule and is likely to pay a stiff penalty.
Denmark is already pushing hard for EU sanctions on Myanmar and
when Danish Foreign Minister Niels Petersen met U.S. Secretary of
State Warren Christopher on July 12, it was the Dane rather than
the American who talked about the need for international pressure
for the restoration of democracy in Burma.

With President Bill Clinton set upon corralling the Hispanic
vote in the U.S. presidential election, Christopher's top
priority for the imposition of sanctions right now remains tiny
communist Cuba. But, since he knew he would be in Jakarta at the
29th AMM, Christopher nonetheless spoke of the need to discuss
with ASEAN countries how to curb the "new tide of repression"
within Myanmar.

The death of Nichols is particularly worrying because if SLORC
is willing to go that far with a friend of Aung San Suu Kyi, then
the regime might also be planning to do something stupid with Suu
Kyi herself -- either by forcibly expelling her as a foreign
agent, or imprisoning her for drafting a constitution, or just
renewing the house arrest from which she was released just a year
ago.

Whether SLORC would be so foolish as to do one of these
things, just as 21 foreign ministers are gathered at the ASEAN
meeting in Jakarta, remains to be seen. SLORC intransigence was
reflected in another commentary in the controlled media calling
Nichols "an unimportant crook" who got his "just deserts".

The only sign of SLORC flexibility is that Aung San Suu Kyi
has been invited to attend the official celebrations today of
Martyr's Day, honoring her father.

Window A:

"The SLORC still shows no signs of accepting the inevitable --
that it can only achieve legitimacy by negotiating with the
person who won the election which SLORC itself organized, and
cannot therefore brand as unfair."

Window B:

The only sign of SLORC flexibility is that Aung San Suu Kyi
has been invited to attend the official celebrations today of
Martyr's Day, honoring her father.