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.