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burma takes tiny steps of progress
- Subject: burma takes tiny steps of progress
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 15:36:00
www.users.interport.net\~moe
24/10/97 Burma takes tiny steps of progress [THE NEW
AGE ,THE PAPER FROM MELBOURNE]
By MARK BAKER
ON A CORNER of the busy intersection, a huge billboard
proclaims "The People's Desire" in the livid red
shades of old
Maoist propaganda. "Crush all internal and external
destructive
elements as the common enemy," it screams, exhorting the
masses to oppose the "stooges holding negative views".
A hundred metres away, down the once gracious sweep of
Rangoon's University Avenue, the people's real
desire stays
hidden from the world, behind the gates from where
she once
spoke to thousands of supporters who flocked to her
regular
weekend rallies. Steel barriers now block the street
to traffic.
Soldiers in camouflage fatigues and flak jackets
stand guard,
while military intelligence agents question anyone who
approaches.
Two years after being released from six years under
house
arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi is effectively a prisoner
once more.
Her old house beside Inya Lake is under constant
surveillance.
Her telephone is tapped and often cut. Visitors must be
screened and approved by the authorities. On the
rare occasions
she dares venture out, Ms Suu Kyi is tailed by
security men.
"We never see her now and we can't go to hear her
speak any
more, but we know she is there and we know she is
still fighting
for us," says a young student activist who has been
unable to
study since universities and colleges were shut down
after a
wave of protests last November.
In the schizophrenic demonology of the generals who
rule Burma
with a hard hand and a humorless heart, Ms Suu Kyi
is at once a
dangerous stooge of the nation's foreign enemies and
a naive
political irrelevance: "The inexperienced lady." The
truth is the
Nobel Peace laureate is neither.
A decade after the daughter of General Aung San, the
hero of
Burma's independence struggle, came home to nurse
her dying
mother and stayed to head a peaceful revolution that
was ended
in a bloodbath, she remains the great hope of Burmese
democracy and the greatest obstacle to the ambitions
of a
corrupt and brutal regime.
Now - more than seven years after the army usurped the
landslide election victory of her National League
for Democracy,
and a year after she was barred from any public
political activity
- Aung San Suu Kyi's stoic resistance is still a
potent force for
change. Tentative signs are emerging that her
patient defiance is
tilting the power balance in Burma.
At the end of last month the league was allowed to
hold its first
convention in seven years. An estimated 1300 delegates
gathered from around the country and close to 800 were
permitted to attend the two-day meeting in the
grounds of Ms
Suu Kyi's home. In previous years, hundreds of
league MPs and
party workers have been rounded up on the eve of the
scheduled congress, detained without charge and
interrogated -
some of them still languish in Rangoon's notorious
Insein Prison.
In an equally remarkable development, 10 days before the
congress, the ruling State Law and Order Restoration
Council
invited the league chairman, Aung Shwe, and two
other party
officials to a meeting with one of the regime's most
important
figures, the so-called Secretary One,
Lieutenant-General Khin
Nyunt. The invitation had been preceded by
exploratory talks in
July.
In the end, the league pulled out of the proposed
meeting at the
last moment - arguing that the regime's refusal to
include Ms Suu
Kyi was an attempt to divide the party. But the
proposing of
even a qualified dialogue has been seen by Rangoon-based
diplomats and some Burmese political analysts as a
significant
move by a regime that has offered only hostility to
its popular
adversaries over the past two years - and
particularly since Ms
Suu Kyi pulled her delegates out of the sham
convention drafting
a new constitution early last year.
In another modest hint of progress, the junta last
Friday
approved a gathering of about 200 league luminaries and
supporters at Ms Suu Kyi's house for a "social
event" to mark
the end of the Buddhist Lent - albeit after
surrounding the place
with almost as many troops and turning away several
hundred
other guests.
"Things are definitely moving. It's a more positive
environment
than we've seen for a long time, although people
remain cautious
about predicting how far and how fast it will go,"
says one senior
diplomat.
Tin Oo, the former Burmese army commander who is now one
of Ms Suu Kyi's most trusted deputies, agrees.
"I am more optimistic now about the future," he
says. "Some of
the senior military officers now see the need for a
political
settlement with the NLD and are trying to move forward."
But no one believes that the junta, if it is edging
towards a deal,
is doing so for reasons other than sheer necessity.
Two powerful
factors are now weighing heavily on the once
intractible regime:
a mounting international clamor for reform that is
becoming
impossible to ignore and the rapid disintegration of
the Burmese
economy.
As the United States and the European Union
strengthen trade
and investment sanctions against Burma, the nine-member
Association of South-East Asian Nations - the
neighbors whose
approval the regime craves - are quietly stepping up
the pressure
for change.
Having ignored Western protests and admitted Burma
to the
regional grouping three months ago, ASEAN is now
prodding
the junta to give credibility to its approach of
"constructive
engagement" by opening a dialogue with Ms Suu Kyi.
The tougher stance ASEAN has taken against Cambodia
after
the July coup in Phnom Penh appears to have
emboldened its
approach to the junta - as well as indications that
the regime's
recalcitrance could derail an important new dialogue
with the
Europeans.
"The SLORC is definitely feeling the pressure now.
They are
starting to get a lot of stick from ASEAN and there
is a growing
recogniton that somewhere along the line they are
going to have
to compromise," says a senior diplomat.
A potentially more pressing incentive is the
country's deepening
economic malaise. Burma continues to teeter on the
verge of
bankruptcy with comparisons now being drawn with the
economic crisis that helped spark the big democracy
uprising in
1988 that catapulted Ms Suu Kyi to political
prominence and
was later brutally suppressed, with the loss of at
least 3000 lives.
Inflation is soaring with the local currency, the
kyat, worth barely
half its black market value a year ago. The trade
deficit is
widening and foreign investment is drying up while
military
spending continues to swallow half the national
budget. There
are now also fears of widespread famine after recent
severe
floods destroyed the rice crop across large areas of
the country.
The much-touted - and delayed - Visit Burma Year has
been a
monumental flop. Despite predictions of as many as
500,000
visitors, fewer than 50,000 are estimated to have
turned up.
Dozens of new luxury hotels - some built to launder
drug trade
profits - are mostly deserted, with occupancy rates
said to be
averaging about 20 per cent. Domestic and
international air
services have been slashed and two foreign carriers
recently quit
their Burma routes.
Despite the junta's continued boasts about rising
foreign
investment, independent sources say there has been a
marked
slowdown over the past year as international trade
sanctions
have begun to bite.
Despite the hints of political compromise, the junta
is maintaining
a public posture of total opposition to any contact
with Ms Suu
Kyi, who holds the post of league secretary-general.
"The dialogue they are demanding, thinking it to be
ambrosia,
cannot be cooked up in a pot shared by the
general-secretary,"
the State-run Pauk Sa newspaper said in an editorial
early this
month.
While moderates in the regime appear to be in the
ascendancy,
hardliners implacably opposed to dealing with Ms Suu
Kyi could
still block progress.
There is a growing belief among some of the National
League
for Democracy's staunchest supporters that Ms Suu
Kyi now
needs to adopt a more conciliatory stance to
encourage the
generals.
"She is also going to have to start showing some
flexibility," says
a Western diplomat. "She keeps pushing without
giving anything
and they'll stop being pushed in the end if they
don't feel she is
giving something as well."
Tin Oo insists the league is ready to compromise,
and that it can
allay the fears of many within the junta that a deal
allowing the
party back to power would open the way to reprisals
against
senior members of the regime.
"We are ready to talk. Aung San Suu Kyi has always
insisted
that there can be real compromise. We can give and
take, but
the most important thing is that we talk and that
those talks
include her," he says.
The 72-year-old former general, himself imprisoned
for several
years for his defence of democracy, remains quietly
confident
that the dictatorship can be ended without further
bloodshed.
"We have struggled for 50 years by force of arms to
try to solve
the problems of our country and that approach has
failed," he
says. "Now is the time for peace and reconciliation.
The people
are fed up and determined to have their rights and
freedoms
restored."