What does constructive engagement add up to?

What does constructive engagement add up to?

By David Jardine

JAKARTA (JP): What is noninterference in your neighbor's
affairs? Is it always a value-free stance? These questions bear
critically on the continued pursuit of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) policy of "constructive
engagement" with the military regime in Myanmar.

If we turn our attention back a little we can recall Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad in a collar-rubbing mood when
Philippine President Joseph Estrada met with Anwar Ibrahim's wife
and daughter.

At the same time as official Malaysia was venting its spleen
on Estrada and U.S. Vice President Al Gore, the wily old Lee Kuan
Yew was taking sides in Indonesia's turbulent politics.

The Singapore senior minister, no stranger to controversy and
always the admirer of the smack of firm government, especially
his own, not only thought the Soeharto family were not such a
greedy bunch after all but went on the record to say so. And why?

Because, he seemed to say, Indonesia was better off with them
than without. He also wanted it to be known that the Indonesian
Military's dual function was a good thing. (The Jakarta Post,
Nov. 20, 1999).

And this was at a time when the student movement was counting
its dead after the still unexplained Semanggi shootings and the
special forces-inspired abductions and murders of activists. The
more politically aware students would have seen that Lee's stance
was all of a piece with his very solid support for the Myanmar
junta and his belief in so-called constructive engagement with
this body, the very same junta that stole the 1990 general
election.

Lee has let it be known that the so-called State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) is the best thing that the Myanmar
people can expect. Never mind that they had voted overwhelmingly
for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).

Here we see one of the leading proponents of ASEAN's policy of
constructive engagement adopting an insouciant attitude to state-
directed terror in two neighboring ASEAN states.

But this is not about Lee Kuan Yew as such. It is about the
rightfulness of commenting on what is going on in your
neighbor's house or garden. If the smoke from your neighbor's
fires is blotting out the sun or the screams of the tortured
carry to you across the garden fence, is it right to remain
silent? "How many times can a man turn his head and pretend
that he just does not see?"

The Yangon junta will, of course, strenuously deny it but
there is more than enough evidence to show that the Myanmar
regime uses forced labor. The BBC, for instance, has clear
documentary evidence of prisoners in chains working on a tourism-
related project and of child labor at work elsewhere under the
most obvious duress.

It is because of this type of proof that the International
Labor Organization (ILO) in June gave Myanmar until Nov. 30 to
bring an end to such abuses or face further international
pressure for disinvestment by foreign companies. Singapore and
Japan were among the countries that failed to prevent this
becoming ILO policy.

ASEAN is thus faced again with a choice. Does it review its
policy, which has clearly failed to mollify SPDC practice in
this, as in many other areas, or does it ignore both the evidence
and world opinion and adopt a willy-nilly business-as-usual
policy?

Constructive engagement is predicated on the assumption that
the SPDC can be persuaded to soften its lines if it is given
sufficient incentives. But when it patently does not work, what
then? If the policy itself is not intrinsically wrong then its
continuation in the present circumstances must be seen as a form
of taking sides against the NLD and the rest of the opposition.
And taking sides is interference.

At this point I should declare an interest. I was twice in my
youth arrested on antiapartheid protests in the United Kingdom
and have never doubted that it was the morally correct thing to
do to protest that odious system. Apartheid was an issue with
universal resonance. Equally, when the Soviets sent their tanks
into Czechoslovakia I was one of thousands who protested
outside the USSR's Embassy in London and believe still it was the
right thing not to turn away.

Constructive engagement has its parallels in the stance taken
by the likes of Margaret Thatcher toward the apartheid regime.
She and others believed they could continue to trade with
Pretoria and that "nice" Mr. (B.J.) Vorster and that "nice" Mr.
(Pieter) Botha would see reason. The leaders did not, and she had
clearly taken sides with them. It was sanctions of various kinds
that altered conditions in South Africa and finally forced F.W.
de Klerk to release Nelson Mandela and go to the conference table
with him.

What ASEAN cannot now do is to duck the Myanmar issue any
longer behind the smokescreen of constructive engagement.

The writer is a freelance writer in Jakarta.