Editorials/ opinion / 8/9/ august
by Shridath Ramphal
George Orwell predicted that of all thr countries of the British Empire, none was more likely to prosper on achieving independence than Burma. Here was a country rich in human and natural resources whose future seemed assured.
Fifthy years later, the reality is the opposite. Burma is near the bottom of the international league by most measures . Only in one, human rights abuses, is it near the top. It is ruled by a military dictatorship that has been in power in various guises since 1962.
It is the source of interethinic conflict, refugees and internal displacement, severe human rights abuses, narcotics production and trafficking and extensive environmental degradation.
Universites and colleges are repeatedly closed for prolonged periods for fear of political unrest, blighting a whole generation of students. Decades of self-imposed isolation and declining income levels have taken a heavy toll. The harshness of the regime contrasts unhappily with the gentleness of the people and their Buddhistethic of nonviolence.
Georges Orwell, who served in Burma as a policeman before he became famouse as a writer , would be horrified.
Ten years ago, long-suffering patience gave way to open protest.
Tens of thousands of ordinary people took to the streets of Rangoon and other towns to demand the restoration of democratic government. On Aug.8, 1988, the Burmese Army brutally crushed the protests. The scale of the killings - more than 1,000 were slain in the following weeks --shocked the world.
To stem the tide of revolt, the army promised national elections, confident of contriving on outcome favorable to itself. These were held in May 1990. To the army's surprise the main opposition party , the National League for Democracy, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, won a decisive victory, gaining 392 of the 485 seats contested. The army ignored the result, embarking instead on a policy of sustained repression and contrived contitution-making that continues to this day.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, had been placed under house arrest nine months before the elections .
Formally released in July1995, her activities and moviments remain severely restricted. Her attempts to defy these restrictions have led to contant problems with the junta.
The most recent was her attempt to travel outside Rangon to meet supporters, who, together with other democracy activists, are unable to engage in normal political activity. Blocked by soldiers, she spent six days, trapped but defiant, in her car on a bridge, providing the world with an Orwellian spectacle. Her subsequent forcible return home gave an insight into the ways of military junta bent on perpetuating its own power.
Burma is the only country in the world where armed fighting has continue4d without pause since World War II . In the hills of the north and east, various ethnic groups have fought the Burmese Army and each other for more than 50 years. Thousands of villages and millions of people have know little other than armedconflict and its consequences. The army's policy of forcible clearance, migration and resettlement has ddisplaced more than a million people, creating at least 400,000 refugees in Thailand and Bangladesh alone.
Opium is the only crop the displaced can grow and reasonably expect to sell.
It is a measure of their plight that Burma today supplies nearly half the world's heroin. The militia of the former Burma Communist Party, now in tacit alliance with the regime in return for local autonomy, is reported to be heavily involved in drug trafficking, which may have become the country's chief revenue earner.
The army boasts that it has pacified the country and that most of Burma's insurgencies have given way to ceasefires. Welcome though they are, they hardley afford a lasting basis for peace, let alone a sense of security to Burma's many minority peoples.
Only democracy can provide that assurance. The promise of the 1990 elections in Burma was the coalition that it forged, under the bunner of the National League for Democracy and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, among Burma's many ethnic communities.
For the first time since Burma's independence there was a real prospect
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FIFTY YEARS AGO, GEORGE ORWELL THOUGHT THAT OF ALL THE NATIONS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE, BURMA'S FUTURE LOOKED THE ROSIEST. HE WOULD BE HORRIFIED.
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that the democratic process would foster a culture of compromise. A great opportunity was thwarted by military intransigence. Fortunatelythe coalition still holds, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as its acknowledged leader.
The international response has been halfhearted and esitant. In 1988 many Western governments and multilateral organizations suspended aid. This year the United States banned direct investment. The European Union, however, has paid lip service to the democratic cause but allowed its commercial interests to take precedence.
By joining the legal battle against American sanctions, Europe will only give comfort to the regime in Rangoon. Its democratic protestations will be seen for what they are -- mere words.
On the 10th anniversary of the popular uprising in Burma, the time has come to give the "Burma problem the attention it deserves. The United States, the EU, Japon and the Association of South East Asian Nations must join to try to break Burma's political stalemate.
This is not an ideological imperative but a practical necessity.
The world will be a better and safer place when it is a world of functioning democraties. Democracies do not have famines; they tend not fight each other, the people of democracies are not among the world's refugees. While democracy is not a panacea for all Burma 's problems, it alone offers hope for pulling the country back from the abyss and enabling its peoples to live in armony.
What Burma needs is a more creative and concerned diplomatic strategy that targets the root causes of its problems: war, poverty, ethnic discord and the absence of political freedom. The international community must use aid to foster a process of reform and national reconciliation to end five decades of conflict.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has called repeatedly for political dialogue with the army, so far without response. She has now named Aug. 21 as a deadline for reconvening the Parliament elected in 1990. Southeast Asian governments, having admitted Burma as a member of ASEAN in July 1997, have a special responsibility to nudge the regime to face reality and change course. A region in financial and economic turmoil can hardly afford another major flash point.
Thousands are still dying needlessly in Burma. Ten years on, the world needs to rethink its response to the Burma problem and stop relegating it to the sidelines.
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the writer, formerly secretary-general of the Commonwealth, is now chairman of the board of the international Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, of which Daw Aung san Suu Kyi is a member. He contributed this comment to the Herald Tribune.
buona notte.
