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Burma : Little Hopr for Democracy



Burma : Little Hope for Democracy
By: Soe Myint

(From Volume 3, Number 26, December 1998 issue of Asian Affairs, a monthly
magazine published in U.K)

If I were asked to describe the current political situation of Burma in
one sentence, I would say that it is a political deadlock. The stand-off
between the ruling military junta, namely State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC) and the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) led
by Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has led an atmosphere of
uncertainty building up in the country. 
Political tension between the government and NLD started building up in
May this year when NLD party Congress resolved to formally ask the
military regime to implement the result of 10 elections in which the party
had won a landslide victory. While the congress set a deadline for the
Government to respect the will of the people or face their wrath, the
latter responded by cracking down on elected Members of Parliament (MPs)
and other NLD activists. Over the last five months, some 1,000 NLD members
and supporters including more than 200 Members of Parliament have been
arrested. The government had officially announced that these Members of
Parliament were being "invited" to work towards national peace and
stability in the country. Actually they would put under illegal detention. 
Meanwhile, NLD had decided to intensify its agitation to press for the
convening of Parliament. Together with its allied ethnic parties, the
party has formed a 10-member committee, which is said to have the mandate
of more than 250 elected MPs, including the arrested lawmakers. The
committee includes Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Meanwhile, the military junta has stepped up its tirade against the NLD
and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The state-controlled media have been describing
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as "traitor". "Traitors within the country are paving
the way for neocolonialists to interfere in our internal affairs," said
General Than Shwe, leader of the junta on the same day when the NLD formed
the 10-members committee. 
Though, no one from the committee has been arrested so far, the junta has
been resorting to other means to denounce the leaders of the Burma's
democratic movement. They have been organizing "public rallies" in various
towns, denouncing the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Some of the
military-sponsored rallies, which were attended by more than 20,000
people, have raised the demand for the deportation of Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi. 

Since 1992, the United Nations General Assembly has been annually passing
resolutions on Burma regarding its human rights situation. It has adopted
resolutions in favour of restoration of democracy in the country and urged
the military regime to enter dialogue with NLD and ethnic nationalities
for restoration of democracy in the country. But the Burmese Government
has persistently refused to co-operate with the United Nations. The UN
Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Burma (Myanmar), Judge Rajsoomer
Lallah has not been allowed to visit Burma since his appointment in July
1996. The Government refused to accept the visit of Ambassador Razali
Ismail, the personal emissary of United Nations Secretary General, early
this year. 
In his interim report submitted to the current 53rd UN General Assembly,
the Special Rapporteur Rajsoomer Lallah says: "Violations of human rights
remain extremely serious". 
The military Government maintains that the UN should not interfere in its
internal matters. "There are those who would like to use the United
Nations to interfere in matters which are essentially within the domestic
jurisdiction of Myanmar (Burma)," the junta's then Foreign Minister U Ohn
Gyaw told the UN General Assembly in October. 
UN Deputy Secretary-General Alvaro de Soto was allowed to visit Burma in
the last week of October. He met both military Government and NLD leaders.
Although his report to the Secretary-General Kofi Annan has not been made
public yet, it is unlikely that he made achieved break-through in the
current political stalemate in Burma. 
The exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) had
called on the on-going UN General Assembly to pass a tougher resolution
this year to allow greater international sanctions to force the junta to
comply with the UN resolutions. It wants the UN General Assembly
resolution to contain action-oriented measures against the military
regime. 
The United States and Canada have already slapped economic sanctions on
Burma. The European Union, in its foreign ministerial meeting in October,
decided to tighten sanctions, including bans on transit visas for the
junta members.
ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) had allowed Burma to join
the association in July 1997. It is also beginning to reconsider its
policy towards Burma in order to maintain harmonious relations with the
European Union and other western countries in these times of economic
crisis. "The junta in Rangoon is increasingly becoming a problem for the
Association of South East Asian Nations, whose members are split publicly
over whether or not they should criticize Burma's internal politics,"
wrote Bertil Lintner, a Burma specialist and correspondent of the Far
Eastern Economic Review in November.
The Burmese government has been releasing some of the detained NLD members
since November. The junta said it had released about 300 NLD members and
it described the release as "returning home" after fruitful discussions
with the Government. In fact, some of the NLD members and Members of
Parliament have resigned from the party. Some town-level NLD offices have
also closed down. The NLD says that the arrested leaders were subjected to
brutal mental and physical torture to force them into quitting the
democratic movement.
Many among Burma's democracy activists feel that all efforts at urging the
military leaders for a peaceful and smooth transition to democracy would
be futile. "What we need now is a popular upsurge of the people to force
out the military leaders from the seat of power," said Dr. Tint Swe, South
Asian Affairs Minister of the National Coalition Government of the Union
of Burma (NCGUB). The military regime is also facing problems of its own
making. The country is reeling under severe economic crisis. Recently, the
cabinet was reshuffled to include a new foreign minister and new deputy
ministers. Opposition groups say that the power struggle going on within
the military Government is getting intensified and the Lt. Gen. Khin
Nyunt-led faction is gaining an upper hand. Khin Nyunt, known to be the
second most powerful man in the regime, is the chief of the military
intelligence. He also heads a political committee formed with 16 top
military leaders by the junta in September last. "And hopefully, the power
struggle ong the generals may pave the way towards a substantive dialogue
between the Government and the opposition", hopes Dr. Tint Swe. 

(Soe Myint is a Burmese journalist living in India.)