A stifled Myanmar

The ruling military junta had brutally crushed the revolt, but the legacy of fighting for democracy has survived. Students organised a major demonstration in Yangon on 19 August, in protest against the government’s decision to double fuel prices.

Initially, this time the junta didn’t stop the protesters. But, when the students held yet another protest march in Yangon on 22 August ~ assessed as the largest public demonstration in a decade ~ the junta deployed thugs of the pro-regime Union of Solidarity and Development Association and Swan Arrshin in a crackdown on the protesters.

Those detained included the 1988 veterans, notably Min Ko Naing and Koko Gyi, but the agitation has snowballed, spreading to other parts of the country. A group known as Committee for Peaceful Protest Against Famine defiantly organised a public protest on 23 August in front of the city hall.

Events ignored

Western governments have condemned the suppression of peaceful protests. But, like our Foreign Office, the Indian media has by and large ignored the events reflecting the simmering public disaffection against the government in Myanmar.

Ever since the abrupt reversal in the mid-nineties of our pro-democracy foreign policy on Myanmar, New Delhi has been firmly backing the junta to the total neglect of the country’s democratic forces. The fact that pusillanimity has become the cornerstone of South Block’s policy is starkly evident from our indifference to the prolonged detention of Suu Kyi.

Though India had awarded its highest civilian award to her, our present leaders are scared to raise the issue of her release ~ a demand being consistently voiced by the UN and most democratic countries including the ASEAN states that do business with the junta. Last year, during the former Indian President’s state visit to Myanmar he raised the issue of Su Kyi’s “well being” with General Than Shwe only on the tarmac of the airport where the General had come to receive him.

The European Union and the United States have imposed economic sanctions on Myanmar for the military regime’s unbridled abuse of human rights. But such measures have been largely negated by the junta-friendly policies of China, Thailand and India.
Under military rule since last year, Thailand has its own compulsions.

Its present rulers are said to be pursuing a plan to amend the constitution to give the military an institutionalised role in the governance of the country.

India’s ever increasing funding and military aid to the Myanmarese junta was embedded in the hope that Myanmar would provide oil and a launching pad for joint counter-insurgency operations in the North-east, thereby countering China’s strategic clout in Myanmar. But this has come a cropper.

India’s hope of getting oil and gas supplies has been belied by the generals in Yangon. The junta has sold these energy resources to China instead. Earlier this month, ONGC lost out to Petro-China its bid to import gas from the A-1 and A-3 blocks off the Arakan coast in which India’s GAIL and ONGC Videsh together hold 30 per cent stake.

New Delhi’s hope of getting strategic cooperation from the junta in containing insurgency has come to nought. Apart from reports regarding regular contacts between the Myanmarese military and the NE militants at the local level, the insurgency problem is essentially homegrown. In February 1998, the Indian army went out of its way to help crush the Rakhaine insurgency in Myanmar through its Operation Leach, killing leaders of an India-friendly Arakan opposition group.

An Indian army officer, acting as an agent of the Myanmarese Intelligence, carried out the massacre in the Andaman Islands, but even that act of treachery couldn’t secure effective cooperation from the junta in dislodging the Indian insurgents from their bases inside Myanmar, let alone secure gas from the Arakan shore.

Despite India’s once strong support for the democratic movement in Myanmar and China’s record of backing the military junta, China has emerged as the “key interlocutor”. Lately, Beijing has been hosting talks between the US and Myanmar and facilitating UN-Myanmar interaction.

In June this year, Eric John, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State held talks with Myanmar’s ministers of Foreign Affairs, Culture and Information in Beijing. On 14-15 August 2007, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe, met representatives of the Myanmarese foreign ministry in the Chinese capital. The agenda focused on Myanmar. Clearly, instead of cutting into Chinese influence in Myanmar, India has been left in the lurch in international diplomacy.

The reason why India has failed to achieve any of its aims in Myanmar is our ineffective political leadership and the incompetence of the MEA to conduct multi-pronged diplomacy in the increasingly complex post-Cold War scenario.

Going by the number and frequency of military visits, it appears that our army has been calling the shots in Myanmar. That explains our increasingly bankrupt policy that is focused on only giving and not taking anything in return.

No threat

The spontaneous student uprising that the country is now witnessing is not a threat to the military junta. Going by its record, it will crush the movement with its characteristic brutality. The situation may become volatile if the unrest spreads to the interiors in which case the junta will resort to increased extra-judicial killings, arrests, disappearances and torture. That will trigger a long cycle of repression and revolt. The public condemnation of the human rights violations by the ICRC on 29 June 2007 is a clear signal of the deteriorating situation in the country.

The foreign ministers of ASEAN in their summit in July 2007 expressed concern over the slow pace of change and urged the junta to “show tangible progress that would lead to a peaceful transition to democracy in the near future”, release Suu Kyi and all political detainees.

On 20 August 2007, a group of ASEAN lawmakers urged India and China to withdraw their support to the military rulers because they had failed to introduce democratic reforms. Charles Chong, a Member of Parliament from Singapore, has stated that ASEAN, China and India should form a “triangle of influence” to exert political and economic pressure.

Will South Block review its policy of blindly supporting the junta and throw India’s weight behind the ASEAN initiative for national reconciliation and restoration of democracy?