Bangkok Post January 4, 1998 EDITOR

[suriya@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Bangkok Post January 4, 1998 
                               

                            EDITORIAL OPINION


              Burma has little 
              enough to 
              celebrate

                Fifty years of "independence" would 
              appear to have given the Burmese 
              people precious little to be grateful for, 
              and even less reason for optimism. 
              Rather than any sense of growing 
              enlightenment, the anniversary brings 
              only gloom.



              Bedeviled by internal dissent, scorned by the international 
              community, strapped for cash, Burma has little if anything to 
              celebrate today, the 50th anniversary of its independence.

              India and Pakistan, though politically at sea and leery of each 
              other's intentions regarding Kashmir, could at least justify their 
              own independence day fireworks earlier this year. Both were 
              rapidly becoming hefty players in the beleaguered Asian money 
              markets and both had played generous if not altogether charming 
              hosts to Britain's Queen Elizabeth.

              Burma may have to settle for a hand-held sparkler. At least it 
              found a rather bewildering role to play this year in the 
              Association of Southeast Asian Nations, although the European 
              Union's door still remains locked to Burma and Burma alone.

              The generals of the State Peace and Development Council will 
              no doubt claim much more as the banners flutter aloft today.

              They will point out that reconciliatory negotiations began this 
              year with the opposition National League for Democracy. They 
              will not mention that those talks came to an abrupt halt as soon 
              as it became clear to the League that its leader, Aung San Suu 
              Kyi, remained persona non grata to the powers-that-be.

              The generals will note that government corruption was all but 
              wiped out with November's cabinet reshuffle under the regime's 
              new title. They will not acknowledge that a State Law and Order 
              Restoration Council is by any other name still a "Slorc".

              Nor will they concede that the only corruption the world really 
              cares about when it comes to Burma is that of its iron-fisted, 
              morally bankrupt rulers who refuse to grant their people basic 
              human rights, and in fact repeatedly cheat their citizens out of 
              their rights.

              Nor will they address the fundamental error in recent Burmese 
              history: denial of the NLD's overwhelming victory in the 1991 
              election and the subsequent imprisonment of Suu Kyi and other 
              leading "dissidents".

              Nor will the generals discuss the fundamental irony in recent 
              Burmese history: that Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner 
              who remains under virtual house arrest, is the daughter of Aung 
              San, the late national hero whose efforts 50 years ago produced 
              exactly the reason for today's commemoration.

              Ever since Ne Win grabbed power in 1962, the armed forces 
              have been the key to maintaining law and order. The world was 
              a different place then; the military's continuing dominance is an 
              anachronism today.

              Celebrate independence? How does one celebrate freedom 
              while in chains? Suu Kyi cannot move about without harassment; 
              she is truly in chains. The Burmese people have seen their 
              currency vanish and foreign reserves dry up; they are enslaved to 
              the government's ideology of desperation. The country will not 
              be admitted to other international cooperative ventures anytime 
              soon; it is enchained to old ways and diehard regimentalism.

              "As I see it," one Burma-watcher told AFP this week, "things 
              have for better or worse sedimented into a situation reminiscent 
              of pre-1988 ... empty bellies, empty state coffers and moral 
              degradation."