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Political fireworks in Rangoon

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<p><img border="0" src="nldflag.jpg" width="129" height="89"><img border="0" src="nldflag.jpg" width="129" height="89"><img border="0" src="nldflag.jpg" width="129" height="89"><img border="0" src="nldflag.jpg" width="129" height="89"><img border="0" src="nldflag.jpg" width="129" height="89"><img border="0" src="nldflag.jpg" width="129" height="89"><img border="0" src="nldflag.jpg" width="129" height="89"></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="6"><img border="0" src="_467871_paper300.jpg" width="330" height="208">
</font><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="7">P</font><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="6">olitical
fireworks in Rangoon, Manila and Seoul: democracy could not be bashed nor marginalized</font></b></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4"><b>( In response to Myint Thein (
Bangkok Post, 2nd. Jan, 2000 and Roger Mitton, Asiaweek, Jan14, 2000)</b></font></p>
<b>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">by  Myint Shwe </font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">(National League for
Democracy-Liberated Area)</font></p>
</b>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4"><b>Burma </b>entered into Year 2000
with a military dictatorship on its back, mocking the post Cold War's so-called
universal transitions to democracy. In the last twelve years since the 1988 open
crisis, much have been attempted on the part of the Burmese opposition and the
international supporters to get rid the Burmese army off the back of the Burmese
people virtually through all conceivable means short of a Kosovo style
international intervention. Despite that the Burmese military regimes' attempt
to come back into world mainstream still wearing green has so far been
thwarted, that the beleaguered regime still survive and even revitalizing has
left enemies of Rangoon stunned, confused and becoming uncertain with their
strategies and attitude.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">While the military junta of Burma
remains the same in the last twelve years except for a name change, from SLORC
to SPDC, this very same period has changed the other side of the barricade a
lot. Patriots become impatient with the situation and start revealing their
despair with the non-violent tactics of the domestic opposition, which is
walking dangerously on a thin red line inside Burma. Diaspora Burmese such as
one Myint Thein, of whom the <i>Bangkok Post</i> daily has described as a senior
advisor to the Burmese resistance, has criticized "the Gandhian type of
passive resistance of Aung San Suu Kyi" as all but useless. He said, "Aung
San Suu Kyi was a harmless opponent of the SPDC generals. She would irritate the
generals with her press reviews but she is not a serous threat to
them."(Bangkok Post, Jan 2, 2000). It seems it has not only become
necessary for such "senior advisors" of Burmese resistance to give
refresher courses about "division of labor in political struggle" in
general, but also to particularly characterize Myint Thien's valor by quoting a
moral from Aesob's Fables. It says, "It is easy to be brave from a safe
distance".</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">With his militant air, Myint Thein even
has, rather boastfully, revealed that about 200 Burmese student
commandoes are now under training. His story will legitimate the brutal junta's
further merciless and random preventive measures inside Burma, even if it will
not head-off the plot assuming his info is a true story, and questionable to his
true identity in the difficult and dangerous struggle for publicizing of it. For
Thailand, a country that has a difficulty of face saving to both sides of the
Burmese national conflict, it will cost another friction with the arrogant
military junta in her bumpy relation with Burma. There can be another round of
border trade stoppage and shootings at Thai fishing trawlers.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Anyway, frustration and disappointment
are not restricted to the Burmese alone. All international "parties
concerned" that have been involved in the last dozen years with visible or
implicit interest in Burma's transition into democracy; governments, NGOs,
media, multinational corporations and even academia, are more or less infected
with this kind of depression. While many of them are keeping their
disappointment of too slow the progress to themselves, many others blame each
other within the same camp. The opposition figurehead, Aung San Suu Kyi, was on
the top of the list as being stubborn or inflexible. Unfortunately, we have to
admit that it is true. However, besides "division
of labor in politics", there is one more important thing most of us have gone forgotten in
the long and arduous struggle which is that there exists a "divide"
between democracy and dictatorship, a divide which has to be named
"principles". When it comes to principles, there is little room left
for maneuver. And the one who has been assigned to withstand at this front has
the prior-given disadvantage of being inflexible. Aung San Suu Kyi was chosen to
shoulder such a premeditatedly thankless job, later abetted with the award of
Noble Prize for peace. Like it or not, a peace prize-winner cannot call to arms
while her adversary is left free to choose all available tactics, ranging from
buying lobby in Washington D.C to Burmese arcane rituals apart from the well
known atrocities.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">However, far worse than Myint Thein who
has just turned sour yet belongs to democracy, are articles by Roger Mitton of
Asiaweek, a leading weekly news journal with an expressed aim of becoming voice
of the region. Asiaweek has been publishing a series of articles in the last
couple of years implicitly discrediting the Burmese democratic opposition side,
above all Aung San Suu Kyi, with stories ranging from her personal affair and her
temper to her political caliber. What Asiaweek has carried about Burmese opposition
and its figurehead may or may not be factually correct. But certainly the ways it presents and
interpret episodes are increasingly much harmful to democracy in Burma. But
as of other characters in the story, Roger Mitton uses to depict the Burmese
junta leaders; the "workaholic" Khin Nyunt, the outspoken David Abel
and the history-tutoring Win Aung, as Burma's no-nonsense leaders with clear
sense of direction, longer term visions, and faith in what they are doing, than
the Burmese opposition. Even their "good" English did not escape from
Mitton's attention.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">But Roger Mitton, who is a frequenter
to Rangoon, has failed to report the world what would be a terribly
sensational story in which the same Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, the intelligence chief
and the de-facto ruler of Burma, is personally responsible for the brutal
tortured to death of two newspaper men from <i>Kye Mon (The Mirror Daily)</i> in
Rangoon two months ago. Their alleged offence was negligible, implicitly
indicating him by way of another story side by side, on the frontage page of the
newspaper, where his images use to dominate, as "the world's greatest
liar". Certainly the rest of the world will have difficulty in believing
such stories coming out of Burma because this is happening in the democratic
world everywhere everyday, and nobody care. Deplorable is, these two poor souls
are media persons who believed in Freedom of Press like Mitton himself, not
members of the Burmese opposition party which is suspicious of challenging
state power in Burma.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">The interactive edition of Asiaweek,
January 14, 2000 issue carried a summed-up article (<i>Sending out Feelers,
Asiaweek, Vol.26, No.1</i>) about the level of cooperative performance of SPDC
by Roger Mitton. He has listed a number of good attitudes shown by SPDC in the
last two years: Interpol's Rangoon Drug Conference, the ICRC's prison visits and
the junta's green light for the proposed Australian Human Rights education
training program in Burma, proving how much the junta has been ardent,
cooperative and self reforming. (<i>And Suu Kyi was unhappy about the move,
saying it might be exploited by the regime, but she reserved judgment to see
whether repeat visits would be allowed.</i> Mitton's words in the same article).
He was supposing what De Soto and Lalal have repeatedly and miserably failed are
going to be achieved by the Japanese and the Koreans. Below is a piece of
Mitton's description about how a miraculous turn is about to take place, made it
happened by the junta, which at first glance will look neutral and encouraging
but fully loaded with cleverly crafted pro junta usages.</font></p>
<blockquote>
  <blockquote>
    <p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">" Realizing that this
    Western-inspired tactic was going nowhere, the Japanese and South Koreans
    explored other possibilities. Having welcomed the ICRC initiative, and
    applauded Australia's moves, they now sought their own "creative
    approaches" to Myanmar. At November's ASEAN Informal Summit in Manila,
    Japanese PM Obuchi Keizo held a landmark meeting with junta leader Gen. Than
    Shwe and other key figures. Three hours later, Than Shwe and his entourage
    met with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. Both encounters heralded
    future developments.<br>
    Hashimoto made four points to the generals. First, they should use the
    police not the military to maintain order. Second, they should fully reopen
    all the universities, closed three years ago after student protests. Third,
    the regime should quicken moves to a market economy, especially in promoting
    more privatization. He urged them to consider employing more foreigners as
    consultants, including Japanese technical experts. Lastly, he said the
    generals should not push Suu Kyi into a corner so that she becomes the
    heroine of a tragedy. Instead, they should keep a working relationship with
    her. Junta leaders listened to Hashimoto's proposals, appreciating the
    non-threatening way in which they were made."</font></p>
  </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">True, the Burmese junta will appreciate
and will be more than happy to cooperative with any international "third
party" who not only can ignore its continuing human rights crimes, let
alone its illegitimacy in office, but also coming with a fat moneybag. But so
long as a donor wannabe is checking its criminal records the junta leaders will
ignore him no matter how big is his moneybag. They will retort they are not
monkeys. Because it is not safe for them to see what kind of <b>democratic
harassments</b> are hounding Suharto, Warento, Pinochet and their likes out
there outside Burma now. Thus the junta's clear demand to the corporate interest driven world
today came out to be, "Deal with us only, not with the others (i.e. democracy).
We can and we will offer you more than they can." Strikingly this stiff
stance breathes the same air of Beijing's <b> One China Policy</b> that rejects Taiwan's
existence. Yet this insistence is winning over Burma's culturally close Asian
brothers because, in the long struggle for democracy, it is not the children of
Burma but the Asian multinationals that cannot wait.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Hashimoto has advised the junta.
"First they should use the police not the military to maintain order in
maintaining order". What poor Hashimoto seems not to have known is exactly
what every six years old Burmese child who starts going out to school on
Rangoon's roads knows well, i.e. the cops and the soldiers are the same trigger
happy guys in their miserable country. Indeed Rangoon's "Riot Police"
are the battle-hardened soldiers transferred from Ministry of Defense to
Ministry of Home Affairs, known as Lon-Hteins, who first massacred demonstrating
students in March 1987. "Lastly, Hashimoto said the generals should not
push Suu Kyi into a corner so that she becomes the heroine of a tragedy. They
should keep a working relationship with her." Many thanks to <i>Hashimoto
san</i> for his kind consideration about <i>Suu Kyi san</i> even though the
advice is made basically in his client's interests.</font></p>
<blockquote>
  <blockquote>
    <p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">"Even among diehard
    anti-regime Western nations, there is a growing receptivity to new
    approaches. Recently, the envoys of several European and North American
    nations privately conceded that sanctions and ostracism are not working.
    But, given well-funded and efficient pro-Suu Kyi lobbies back home, they
    cannot risk publicly recommending policy changes."</font></p>
  </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">A misleading impression coming out of this
passage is that it is Suu Kyi who has originally asked for sanctions. In fact
she is not, though she appreciated it as an additional mean when Bill Clinton
actually initiated. If any Western nation, that has misread the real
dimensions of the Burmese junta, now found itself in an awkward position for
policy reversal, it is their problem. They should have known at the start that
Burma is not a banana republic nor the junta, something that can be cowed
by reprimands alone. But here Myint Thein is quite right and Mitton is wrong. It
is premature to generalize that sanctions are not working. Democratic
transitions worldwide are multi-causal epics. No single method can be attributed
as "democracy obtainer" in these transitions. Each and every mode in
the common struggle contributes to the downfall of the authoritarian regime
though it cannot be routed exactly as which goes where. Who can deny that Andrei
Skharov's dissent against Khrushev in the 50s has somehow contributed to the eventual
dissolution of the Goberchev's Soviet Empire in 1991? In the Burmese case, if
sanctions are not working, then all other means as well are the same, so far not
working either. In fact sanctions are, when prudently used with controlled side
effects, good for cooking-up of the case though they by themselves may not bring
the end result.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">The current Asian wooing of the Burmese
junta is far more for their economic interests than for democracy. In
essence, playing language of democracy, East Asians are fighting their own
battle for Burma market against their Western rivals, as Burma constitutes the
last frontier for global capitalism. And if they can win it means they are just
harvesting from what the West have long been cooking up by diplomatic and other
pressures over the junta. Because East Asians no longer can keep themselves
merely gazing at what ASEAN and Chinese investors are doing in Burma. Mitton
should have known that. He probably would. In eventuality, Mitton is just
advocating the controversial Asian Way to Democracy which argues that
citizens can hope for democratic rights only as trickled down benefits from
economic development, uncertain and in the last place of the list. But in the
Burmese case even this trickled down democracy would not be possible for reasons
below.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Despite "Peace" and "Development" are in
the new name of the junta, the current Burmese state is characteristically far
from developmental states of (Meiji) Japan, South Korea, Taiwan or Singapore,
and is in reality a predatory state like Mobutu's Zaire in Africa. The predatory
state preys upon the society by creating innumerable laws as much as it can
fancy. The aim of making laws is only to be violated and sought bribes and
tributes. Political Economy calls it rent-seeking behavior, harmful to
production, growth and eventually national economy. Once rent seeking is
ubiquitous, surcharges on all kinds of transactions bogs down productivity and
distort the market. Citizens mired in this morally dirty game playing simply to
recompense what they have spent with hate in circular relations. From head of state
to hospital servant, as Aung San Suu Kyi has once written, no one can be blamed
since all became equally guilty and it cannot be stopped easily. The state
leaders and the rich keep safe their wealth in foreign accounts rather than
reinvest in the economy. Rent seeking also creates a swollen
bureaucracy (esp. security forces and legal  apparatuses that keep unjust laws
in force) and thus the society is always top heavy. This is the real Burma of today
despites some new bridges and roads built by the junta as proofs of development
using forced labor.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">If East Asian leaders believe, as
Mitton quoted in his article, their "creative approach" will change
Burma for the better it would be quite interesting to witness another Asian
miracle. But Burma already has defaulted loans. At this stage financial
injection without a democratic precondition constitutes a bailout, not to the
economy, but to the beleaguered military junta. In the so-called
"Chilston-2" summit planned to meet in Seoul by March, more specific steps to
promote economic reform are tabled. Meanwhile, assistances to fight AIDS and
drug are most likely. But even these  humanitarian assistances are
feared of misuse. In the past Burmese troops shot federalist ethnic rebels up from
American helicopters given for drug eradication. If helicopters are of
"dual use" then money can be of "multiple use". In
fact no matter what the humanitarian claim, behind this flimsy propaganda is an
extensively liberalized investment milieu in return from the junta. Then this
sounds a "junta rescue" plan that certainly will marginalize democracy
instead of "slowly moving toward democracy". The democratic opposition
has two good reasons to worry. According to the South Korean Foreign Minister
Hong Soon, "pressuring verges on interference in their domestic
affairs", meaning economic reform will not necessarily enhance
democratization. And on it side, the junta has repeatedly warned the country
that it will allow "Myanmar way to democracy only" of which the right
to define "Myanmar way" is kept to itself.</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Summing up, the case for Burma's
transition to democracy has already spread out to four
continents of the world today. The democratic camp may be said as yet not strong enough to
win but it has grown too strong to be wiped out. At minimum, the 1990 election
has legitimated the democratic opposition as truly and nationally representative. The
opposition is growing up from this bottom line and keeps growing each new day as the
junta continues to commit human right crimes inside the country. Since its loss
in the first legitimacy game in the 990 Election, the military junta has changed
its name and is trying hard to win the second legitimacy game, economic
development. But this also is still uncertain because of " Suu Kyi, The stubborn" at home and
those "pessimist-destructionists"
outside the country, and their damned sanctions. The new Mandalay International
Airport, built a year ago, costs the junta US $150 millions, is still
standing idle without a tourist carrier landing because of international boycotts, earning
nothing to the junta's pocket. It is into this pitched battle, entered the
Japanese and Koreans "exploring other possibilities". They certainly
may have found a possibility that can marginalize democracy by " injecting
hormones into the body of a rapist", as said by a now senile
"Coco Island Returnee" Burmese political prisoner of the olden days.
True people are suffering. However sufferings had begun, not just yesterday, but since four
decades ago in 1962 when the militarists' predatory state first set in upon the
Burmese society.  </font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Worldwide Consumer boycotts against pro-junta Japanese
and Korean companies lay ahead in the enlarging agenda of the internationalized
struggle for Burmese democracy. The path of the struggle may unnecessarily be longer and
winding, making some impatient and the others vociferous. It cannot
be helped, unfortunately. The post-Cold War History promises that it will not let
democracy down, which means nothing is final until it wins.   </font></p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Myint Shwe</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Senior Coordinator for Canadian Chapter</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">National League for Democracy
(Liberated Area)</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Dated, 14th. January, 2000</font></p>
<p><font face="MemoirCondensed" size="4">Email: <a href="mailto:myintshwe@xxxxxxx";>myintshwe@xxxxxxx</a></font></p>
<p>Tel. 416 650-805</p>
<p> </p>
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