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