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More Slorc talk on soc.culture.Burm



Subject: More Slorc talk on soc.culture.Burma

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The following just appeared on soc.culture.Burma and like many before it
seems to come directly from SLORC.  It certainly is the "party line" to call
1991/92 the turning point in modern Burmese history, so that the bad old
past gets blamed on crazy Saw Maung and all credit goes to those reformist
men in green who have opened the country to the world.  

The big question is:  what PR firm is helping the Slorc with these letters?
There is definitely a pattern here. 

Also, can anyone establish who is paying Dobbs Higginson these days?   We're
feel confident there is a retainer involved but we'd like to know how much
he receives to put out this nastiness.


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Reply-To: kmtto@xxxxxxx (KMTTO) 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.burma 
Subject: U.S. Hypocrisy at its Peak. 
Date: 20 Apr 1996 09:06:40 -0400 
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) 
Message-ID: <4lanh0$oct@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

  U.S. HYPOCRISY AT ITS PEAK

Here are some interesting extracts from Mr. M.S. Dobbs-
Higginson's recently published article "Myanmar - Its
Time For a More Objective Assessment."

The author is former chairman of Merrill Lynch, Asia
Pacific Region and also the author of Asia Pacific : Its Role
in the New World Disorder. 

The following extracts hightlights the double standards the
western world is applying today : -
        (a)   In this context, I am reminded of the early
1930's hunger march on Washington D.C., when troops,
under General MacAuthur, fired on the marchers killing
and wounding many of  them. More recently, there was in
1960's Kent State University, U.S.A, incident; namely the
U.S government versus the Vietnam war protestors, when a
number of student protestors were wounded or killed by the
USA's National Guard forces comparatively speaking not
so long ago ! Then, there was the Waco, Texas incident last
year. There were relatively few cries from the world's
international media about the unacceptability of all these
incidents. 

     Then, what about Mexico and its previous
government's excesses - what sanctions were imposed on
it? The list is endless. To coin a new, hyprid phrase "self -
interest is the mother of political hypocrisy" particularly in
the developed, OECD world ! How quickly people forget
history, or ignore other comparable events, when it suits
them. 
        (b)   However, when the new leadership took over
in 1992, they determined that, for the country to evolve,
Myanmar had to develop an open - market economy and
that it could only do so, provided a basic structure of law
and order be developed and maintained. This policy has
already begun to bear fruit, thanks in no small part to the
support of its more reasonable and pragmatic Asian
neighbors, who have themselves already been through the
same process. Thus, the west's in particular the USA's
uniformed, superficial and often voter - oriented views,
concerning the necessity for immediate democratic
elections and, in the interim, the inappropriatness of
extending aid and other forms of support (again with
redoubtable USA leading the way),are largely counter-
productive.
        (c)   The USA seems, rather hypocritically, to
have conveniently forgotten that only last year it delinked
the Most Favoured Nation status it had accorded to China
from the USA's prior condition that China improved its
own appalling human rights record in order to maintain its
MFN status ! In a fair and objective comparison, it should
be pointed out that, the USA, and the 
European Union, have also not asked for sanctions over
either the involvement of the military in Indonesia's
government (which obviously is the Indonesians' own
prerogative ) or, more importantly, over Indonesia's
unilateral annexation of Timor and its subsequent
treatment of the pro - independence Timorese. Quite
clearly, the USA's and the European Union's respective
business communities' interest confortably overcame those
of their liberal and human rights activists. 
  I hope U.S policy makers realize that economic sanctions
do not create necessary conditions for the development of a
thriving, articulate educated middle class, who in turn will
provide the 
necessary resources for a more rapid evolution towards a
more democratic government system. In reality, by
imposing sanctions the first crime the imposers themselves
have physically committed on that particular country is that
life for the ordinary people there is made unbearable.
Malnutrition, starvation and epidemic of diseases will be
unnecessarily created, especially, for the very young and
the old. They will be the first victims of the artificially
created 
curse, designed and exported by the so called civilized
nations, all in the name of humanity and good will for
mankind. Presumably, after thousands and thousand of
children and old folks die of the unnatural death : follows
riots and rebellions against the country's government. Of
course, this is the stage those who had imposed sanctions
have been patiently waiting for. Well, even a non-genious
can predict that these riots and lootings will be
systematically suppressed by the well equipted and well
trained government security forces to restore law and order.

   So, what does sanctions do in reality to unfriendly
governments? 
One would say nothing much in reality unless you intend
solely to destroy the whole population of those countries.
Well, I do hope people in the decision making level
understand these complication and refrain from using mass
population from those countries as guinea pigs in their
experiments. One can not wonder why the sensible,
realistic and proven method called the constructive
engagement policy is not practised in this case.
               MR. Ho Teng, Singapore


(The Korea Herald (and elsewhere) last January, exact
date, uncertain.)
"In my view "

MORE OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT
By Michael Dobbs Higginson

Time out, as the Americans say. Enough is enough.
Sensationalist cries that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel
Peace Prize winner, is another Nelson Mandela or Benazir
Bhutto must be tampered with reason. Quite clearly she is a
remarkable woman and her six-year refusal to be released
from house detention on condition that she be allowed to
leave Myanmar is to be greatly admired.

However, what must not be forgotten is that, after some 28
years abroad, she only resumed to Myanmar in July 1988 to
help her mother who was terminally ill. Her return
coincided with the then countrywide anarchy. She was then
catapulted onto the public stage by virtue of being her
father's daughter (after World War II, Bogyoke (General)
Aung San was the first national leader to seek Burma's
independence from Britain) and by reason for her own
innate decency. However, it must not be forgotten that she
had, collectively, no leadership experience, was only in her
40s, was very idealistic, was approached by a wide variety
of inexperienced/experienced self-interest opposition
groups and was surrounded, a la Tiananmen Square, by
student activists -- to say the least, a very inexperienced,
and thus potentially dangerous, combination.

Objectively, even a comparison with former Philippine
President Cory Aquino, brought to power after President
Marcos' downfall, is stretching things. The laudable, yet
inexperienced and naive Ms. Aquino did little to alleviate
the general confusion when she was elected. Her successor
President Ramos, a former senior general, did much better.

Little fundamental credit seems to have been given to the
current Myanmar military government, which took over
peacefully in 1992 from other older generals, for what it
has done to date in gradually bringing about order and eco-
nomic progress, with comparatively little of the wholesale
repressive, brutal and corrupt practices of other regimes
elsewhere in the world. Its unconditional release of Ms.
Suu Kyi in July, and others, received an initial flurry of
plaudits.

However, the importance of these moves were completely
overshadowed by Ms. Suu Kyi's statement that "all that has
changed is that I have been released, nothing else." Further,
and more dangerously, she has advocated that no foreign
aid be granted until democratic elections have been held.

Without aid, how can Myanmar get itself to the point, in
terms of sufficient economic critical mass with the
concomitant benefits to the people, where such elections
can be held with a reasonable chance that the people will
then have enough not to want to lose it in another bout of
the 1988 chaos?
It must also be appreciated that, unlike many other
countries in Asia, Myanmar has 135 ethnic groups from
which some 16 armed insurgent groups have evolved. This
fact, in turn, has dramatically increased the difficulty of the
government to encourage a sense of national unity and
purpose during the period since independence.

Why has there been little media interest in interviewing
senior members of the current government -they have a
point of view  - to be fair, they should be given an
opportunity to express it. Unfortunately, what little
exposure the government has been given tends to have
been very cursory, with there being a strong bias toward
Ms. Suu Kyi's point of view. Whatever happened to objec-
tivity?

People forget that societies need to have time to evolve
from an authoritarian environment, where the individual
told what to do, to a democratic one where the individual
has free choice concerning what he/she wishes to do.
However,- before a democratic system can work
effectively, such individuals need to have sufficient
education and a sense of personal, moral responsibility and
accountability for their activities.

After the 1990 general election, which the government
allowed, it believed that, from one day to the next, transfer-
ring power to the National League for Democracy was a
recipe for a Tower of Babel disaster. Additionally, it is a
fact that, in direct contravention of the then laws, certain
individual members and certain factions of Ms. Suu Kyi's
party had associations with certain groups of outlawed
insurgents and with some other unsavory elements.

Accordingly, they refused to transfer power and they
continued to keep Ms. Suu Kyi under house detention. The
world, already frustrated by her detention, was astonished,
shocked and outraged. This caused Myanmar to be turned
overnight into a pariah state by the West plus Japan an
attitude easy to take as there were no business interests at
stake.

However, when the new military leadership took over in
1992, they determined that, for the country to evolve,
Myanmar had to develop an open - market economy and
that it could only do so, provided a basic structure of law
and order could be developed and maintained. This policy
has already begun to bear fruit, thanks in no small part to
the support of its more reasonable and pragmatic Asian
neighbors, many of whom have already been through the
same progress.

Conversely, the West's, in particular the United States',
uninformed, superficial and often voter-oriented views,
concerning the necessity for immediate democratic
elections and, in the interim the necessities for trade
embargoes and the inappropriateness of extending aid, are
foolish, naive and finally very counter - productive.

The point, therefore, of this article is to emphasize that
Myanmar only really emerged from isolation in 1992,
decades after countries such as Taiwan, Korea Malaysia,
Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and even
China (1978) started their respective arduous roads to
economic success and changes in their forms of
government; in man, cases, starting with a military
government and evolving toward a more democratic form
of government.

It is therefore hardly reasonable to expect Myanmar to be
at the same stage of development as its Asian neighbors
Sadly, Myanmar seems to have become a convenient
whipping boy to be trotted out for some human rights
bashing when nothing much else is happening o~ when the
human rights and other liberal white - hat extremists,
frustrated else where by the business black-hats, need some
soft target to attack. Who said the world was fair?

The writer is the author of Asia Pacific: Its Role in the New
World Disorder (Mandarin). He is a former chairman of
Merrill Lynch, Asia Pacific Region. Ed.




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