Time for thailand to take humanitarian tack on Myanmar?
Time for thailand to take humanitarian tack on Myanmar?
By Vitit Muntarbhorn
BANGKOK: The Thai Prime Minister's recent visit to Myanmarese refugees along the frontier must have given him a first hand impression of the precarious situation facing opponents of the military junta, alias the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), in Myanmar. With the advent of a new foreign minister in the Thai government on this side of the border, is the time now ripe for rethinking and reorientating Thailand's policy towards Myanmar?
Thailand's policy towards Myanmar, prevalent during the 1990s, has been based upon the all-too-well-known "constructive engagement". Outwardly, it aims not to tamper with the SLORC, even though in 1990 the SLORC lost national elections to pro- democracy groups and is the illegitimate regime ruling Myanmar. Our policy has been reticent to comment on the house arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader and shinning beacon in the fight against authoritarianism, who has been under illegal house arrest since 1989. It has adopted a stultifying silence in the face of a morass of human rights violations in Myanmar, including extensive murders, torture, rape and slavery whereby the SLORC compels people to work under appalling conditions as forced labor.
In the face of these atrocities, key Thai policy-makers of the hesitant kind still classify the events in Myanmar as purely internal. This is manifestly wrong and contradicts international public opinion and standards on the matter. Issues of democracy and human rights in Myanmar are not purely a matter of internal affairs but are a matter of legitimate concern for the international community, including Thailand. The various resolutions on Myanmar in the United Nations confirm this.
However, the Thai policy has reveled with an increasing degree of hypocrisy both at home and abroad in recent years. While constructive engagement outwardly purports to be a hands-off policy in political terms, it has proved to be a manual for rapaciousness in economic terms. Thai economic interests in Myanmar have increasingly enjoyed a field day in forging their links with the SLORC to the detriment of the Myanmarese people.
The signal was doubly evident in the signing of the recent agreement between the Thai and Myanmarese authorities whereby Thailand undertook to buy volumes of gas from the Gulf of Mataban in Myanmar. The huge sums which Thailand will transfer to the SLORC in exchange for the gas will doubtlessly land up in their hands to be used at their "discretion".
In effect, such "discretion" will imply a greater capacity on the part of the SLORC to bolster their own powerbase over the Myanmarese people and to equip themselves with more arms to suppress dissident groups in Myanmar, including the pro-democracy movement and various minorities which have sought a degree of self-determination for the past four decades.
More money and more arms for the SLORC will mean more power for this authoritarian regime. More power for them will also mean a greater menace for our national security. The consequences of half a million troops belonging to the SLORC, well-armed and re- armed by Thai taxpayers' money, directly facing Thailand should not be underestimated by our "economics-led" policy-makers, currently dazed by pecuniary idolatry. In the end, the economic push may turn out to be a military shove.
More repression by the SLORC will ultimately mean more refugees from Myanmar seeking refuge on Thai soil, adding to the insecurity which may ensure. More violations of human rights by the SLORC in Myanmar will also expose the Myanmarese people to the callousness of the Thai policy, classifiable as Thai tacit acquiescence in the misdeeds of the SLORC, and nurture the belief that Thailand wishes to see. Myanmar remain underdeveloped and under the stranglehold of an authoritarian regime. Instead of seeing Thais as friends, those who love peace and democracy in Myanmar will become more cynical towards Thailand's internationals. In enmity.
To be fair, however, the complaint cannot only be lodged against myopic Thai policy-makers of the irresponsible kind. The criticism must equally be addressed to an array of other key players in the international and regional arenas. Take the ASEAN group, for example. While the member countries of ASEAN have adopted a muted tone based upon (yet again) constructive engagement, they have been racing to establish economic ties with the SLORC. Their companies are fighting over the economic spoils in Myanmar as the SLORC shifts gear from isolationism to capitalism, even though the mass base of the Myanmarese people have been prevented from participating in the decision-making and benefit-sharing of those economic rewards.
The ASEAN countries have forgotten perhaps that only a few years ago, it was the SLORC that had persecuted hundreds of thousands of Rakhine Moslems -- those who share the same religion as that of a large number of the population in ASEAN countries -- which resulted in the massive outflows of these Moslems into neighboring Bangladesh. The religious and cultural affinity between that group of refugees and those ASEAN countries has thus been conveniently forgotten for the sake of "economic pragmatism".
Further north, there is the primordial role of China which has increasingly spread its political and economic tentacles over Myanmar as a whole. It is assistance from China which has in recent years played a great part in perpetuating the authoritarian regime in Myanmar. It is arms and equipment from China which has, in larger part, empowered the SLORC to suppress the pro-democracy movement and the rightful claims of minorities in Myanmar. With China's additional ambition to have access to the Indian Ocean via the Myanmarese coast the security of this region will be shaken and stirred by a process of aggrandizement that will have impact not only on the security of Thailand but also on ASEAN as a whole.
On another front, the developed countries, particularly in the West, should be accountable for the double standards and hypocrisy that they bestow upon this region. While outwardly, in the United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, they brand the SLORC as committing serious human rights violations, call for the release of Daw Suu Kyi and advocate peace with the minorities in Myanmar, they are turning a blind eye to the operations of the multinational corporations under their jurisdiction which are vying for economic favors from the SLORC, instead of clamping down on them.
All of these discrepancies bring us back to a seminal point. Unless the international community acts with greater solidarity, the SLORC will chuckle at the pragmatic silence and empty words that are personified by the key players at the international and regional levels.
Internationally, it is high time that the United Nations adopted adequate measures to deal with the SLORC. These should include the following:
1. Effective United Nations dialogue with the SLORC to hand over power to the Myanmarese people within a given time frame, preferably within one year.
2. Immediate and unconditional release of Daw Suu Kyi and other political prisoners by the SLORC.
3. Cessation of human rights violations and hostilities with the minorities in Myanmar by the SLORC.
4. Ejection of the SLORC from the seat in the United Nations General Assembly, if the United Nations dialogue fails in the given time-frame.
5. Sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council against the SLORC, in the event of failure of United Nations dialogue.
Regionally, it is high time that ASEAN and Thailand changed the content of the constructive engagement policy. A new vision based upon an effective "humanitarian response" should herald the following stipulations:
1. Immediate and unconditional release of Daw Suu Kyi and other political prisoners by the SLORC.
2. Cessation of human rights violations and hostilities against Myanmarese minorities by the SLORC.
3. Mediation offered by ASEAN and Thailand to settle disputes between the SLORC, the pro-democracy movement and minorities in Myanmar.
4. Utilization of the annual ASEAN ministerial meetings and the ASEAN Regional Forum as a venue for confidence building and dialogue between the SLORC and the other Myanmarese groups, targeted to dispute settlement within a given time-frame, complementary to that of the United Nations.
5. Sanctions to bolster United Nations efforts, where the initial mediatory efforts fail in the given time-frame.
No longer is it acceptable to be hesitant and reticent. The spirit of "humanitarian response" posits the need for results in an explicit and specific time-bound frame-work for multi-leveled but concerted action.
Vitit Muntarbhorn is Professor at the Faculty of Law, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. He is also Executive Director of Child Rights Asianet.
-- The Nation