Scornful Yangon endangers its economy and people

The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

The fate of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi grows more grave the longer she remains isolated. She completes today her second month in detention for her latest alleged crimes, a May 30 street clash between rival opposition and government supporters in which an unspecified number of persons died. This is her third incarceration by a junta plainly at its wits' end over her continued appeal at home and her mystique abroad as a symbol of resistance against gross injustice.

But censure by Myanmar's ASEAN allies, and muscular diplomacy wielded by countries which have felt less need to be proper, have brought nothing but scorn from Yangon. A recent spate of official commentaries in state media, making Suu Kyi out to be treasonable and a persistent trouble-maker, are a warning that the junta is intent on keeping her inside indefinitely.

One commentary said Myanmar "will be a whirlpool of anarchy and civil conflicts" if Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), had seized power in commotions such as the May 30 incident. It also accused her of plotting to get the outside world to "ostracize" Myanmar.

The generals must not be permitted free rein to sabotage the popular will with such machinations. The more they show themselves determined to impose rule by repression and force of arms, the greater is the need for concerned governments to seek just remedies. Suu Kyi was allowed visitors from the Red Cross on Tuesday, but this is carefully rationed access purely to satisfy foreign governments that she is not ill or mistreated.

A previous visit by Razali Ismail, the United Nations special envoy for Myanmar, brought no indication she would be released. Unless the junta is prevailed upon to grant her complete freedom to manage the national program of the NLD -- this should include mechanisms for a substantive NLD role in the nation's political life -- all the talk of threats, censure and sovereign acts of sanctions will amount to little. And who will get the last laugh?

U.S.President George W. Bush this week approved the latest set of sanctions, closing off the U.S. market to Myanmar goods and freezing Myanmar government assets. But sanctions are rather like a futile gesture -- convenient to use and readily trotted out, but whose utility even the initiators are unsure of. Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung was right when he protested that the U.S. move had been taken "without any regard for the people".

Indeed, hundreds of thousands of garment and shoe workers would be worse off from an export cut-off, not the generals. Another problem with the U.S. approach is that it is viewed also as a subterranean ploy to get at China, Myanmar's only true ally. There is a belief in some quarters that a government in Yangon amenable to manipulating by the U.S. would reinforce America's hand in isolating China.

A pending court action in California, on the other hand, may be the sort of bull run that could bring the junta to heel. A group of Myanmar citizens is suing an American oil company, Unocal, for benefiting from illegal use of forced labour by the Yangon junta in preparing ground work for the Yadana gas pipeline, a joint project with Total of France.

The suit also accuses the army of resorting to rape and murder in the use of labour to fulfill its contractual obligations to the companies. If the judge rules this week that the case brought under the obscure 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act can proceed, Myanmar's largest known foreign investment could be in jeopardy.