Description:
"1.1 Background
Once again like déjà vu the land of Myanmar splashed international front page headlines for its
recent brutal crackdown on protestors and monks in the autumn of 2007. People intercepted the
news with unsurprised horror as their memories flashed back to the infamous 1988 uprisings that
prematurely ended the lives of at least 1,000 civilians in Rangoon alone and possibly 3,000
nationwide.
1
This time around it was different with the international community and media
quickly coming to the aid of the protestors in voicing condemnation of the junta‘s actions and
calling for support for the protestors. Human rights and exiled Burmese activists further
increased pressure on the international community to take action against Myanmar and distance
themselves from the military regime. The 2007 anti-government protests (lasting from August
15th until approximately October 31st) were initially led by students and pro-democracy activists
in response to the government‘s increase of fuel prices, which consequently caused a spike in
public transport and staple food prices.2
In what was already an impoverished situation with
inflation at ahistorical levels, it was of course no surprise that social unrest ensued. This
particular fuel hike served as a watershed event for all the economic problems that had been
troubling the people of Myanmar for the last two decades since the last uprising of 1988 took
place. Monks from all over the country eventually joined in and took to the forefront of the
protests in what would be dubbed the ―Saffron Revolution‖ symbolizing the color of the robes
the monks wore. This did not appease the junta leaders as they proceeded forward with a brutal
crackdown on the protestors that resulted in the beating and killing of both civilians and monks
alike. The final death toll of the junta crackdown varies between the junta‘s own official figures
of 10 up to the 200 casualties claimed by dissident groups. In addition, many monks were
consequently detained and put in prison camps while some fear that many of them were
murdered. Upward to 6,000 demonstrators in all were arrested with many of them being
gradually released.3
As if it was not enough that Myanmar had garnered worldwide criticism for its loathsome
antics, Cyclone Nargis would draw renewed world attention and criticism to the country. On May 2nd of 2008, less than a year after the Saffron Revolution, Myanmar experienced the worst
natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar claiming the lives of over 100,000 people.
Abundant criticisms were directed toward the junta from the bungling of their own relief effort to
the blockage of international aid, and of their undeterred determination to proceed with elections
the following weekend. All of the mishandling and mismanagement of the crisis kept the junta
on the front page news while the international community desperately explored alternatives to
get help to those who needed it most. Yet again the junta reminded the world of its indifference
to its own people and mocked the world community for its inability to do anything. It is
unforeseen at this point whether this catastrophe has resulted in anything more than minimal
cooperation from the regime and often it is only for handouts of international aid. Cyclone
Nargis will presumably serve as a painful lesson that even in the worst state of crisis the junta of
Myanmar will still refuse to buckle to outside pressure.
Twenty years has now passed since the 1988 uprisings that initially brought international
attention to Myanmar and Nobel laureate Daw Aung Suu Kyi to the forefront of the democratic
opposition. Due to Aung San Suu Kyi and her party comrades‘ repeated arrests and detentions
for their political activities, the international community has adopted numerous diplomatic
strategies over the years with the hopes of coercing the junta into releasing the political prisoners
and into accepting the 1990 election results that favored Suu Kyi and her party, the National
League for Democracy (NLD). There has been consistent international pressure and activism
over the years for the release of the more than one thousand political prisoners locked up for
their participation in the 1988 demonstrations and/or other political activities. Despite the myriad
approaches undertaken by various actors the last two decades, Daw Aung Suu Kyi and many
others remain in captivity and the junta still rules the country with an iron fist. The most popular
approach utilized by state actors against the junta has by far been the imposition or threat of
economic sanctions. The historical timing of Suu Kyi‘s arrests and Myanmar‘s deplorable human
rights behavior against the backdrop of the post-Cold War relations proved a pivotal stimulus for
the use of economic sanctions as a diplomatic tool.
In terms of international cooperation in the United Nations, it wasn‘t until the end of the
Cold War that the international organization finally achieved unprecedented cooperation in the
United Nations Security Council (UN SC). Prior to this relations amongst the Security Council
permanent members had chilled from the start of the Cold War and dimmed any hopes for
cooperation in the Security Council. The renewed cooperation that brought an end to the chilly relations in the UN SC was marked by the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. As a result of this new unity,
a string of peacekeeping and enforcement activities followed suit, howbeit it was not military
activities that proved the most popular method of choice, but alternatively it was economic
sanctions that proved most appealing to Security Council members. It comes as no surprise then
that the 1990s has been dubbed ―the decade of economic sanctions.‖
4 Howbeit, not all these
economic sanctions consisted of multilateral mandatory economic sanctions as outlined under
article 41 of the UN Charter. On the contrary, many economic sanctions were and are indeed
today unilateral.
Since the rejuvenation of the UN SC following the Cold War, economic sanctions have
persistently been issued often to the detriment of the civilian population. A strong majority of the
literature on economic sanctions have questioned and raised doubts over the efficacy of
sanctions. A magnitude of political leaders, human rights activists, and scholars remain for the
most part oblivious and aloof to the detrimental harms of sanctions despite that nearly all are
aware that the infamous Iraqi sanctions campaign claimed the lives of half a million (of which
the majority were children). This is clearly another case of ―collective amnesia‖ since the
international community too often forgets the catastrophic errors of their time in spite of slogans
that cry “Never Again”. Sanctions are assumed to be a less costly alternative to armed force
when measuring the cost of lives, but as former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
expressed:
Sanctions, as is generally recognized, are a blunt instrument. They raise the ethical question of whether
suffering inflicted on vulnerable groups in the target country is a legitimate means of exerting pressure on
political leaders whose behaviour is unlikely to be affected by the plight of their subjects.
5
An overwhelming amount of literature and research by experts and scholars concede that
sanctions have had in fact drastic implications for vulnerable populations and frequently did not
achieve the objectives it had aimed for. My particular concern in this debate, which is needy of
more research, is the impact of sanctions on women. Women have appeared to suffer the brunt of
sanctions according to numerous anecdotal evidence since women are often times more
vulnerable to economic sanctions due to their gender and their relative impoverished and
disempowered position. Be that as it may, research in this area remains obsolete or very minimal
and is henceforth worthy of attention due to the urgency of this problem as this paper will show..."
Source/publisher:
Malmö University (Sweden)
Date of Publication:
2009-01-14
Date of entry:
2021-08-07
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Countries:
Myanmar
Language:
English
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pdf
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1.41 MB (149 pages)
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text
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