FT.com / Home UK / UK - Beijing holds key to change in Burma

By Amy Kazmin in Delhi

Published: August 8 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 8 2008 03:00

As the Chinese exult in the opening of an Olympic Games aimed at showing off their nation's ascent under Communist rule, the population of neighbouring Burma is marking a more sombre occasion: the 20th anniversary of a failed pro-democracy uprising.

On August 8 1988 angry Burmese fed up with severe economic hardships and national stagnation after 26 years of socialist-oriented military dictatorship took to the streets en masse to demand democracy. While the dramatic uprising shook the nation and raised hopes of a better life, the military brutally suppressed the protests, killing at least 3,000 people and sending a generation of young Burmese fleeing for the border to struggle in exile.



Twenty years on, Burma remains firmly under the military's boot, with most people struggling to get by in a crippled economy and fearful that any public expression of discontent will result in their imprisonment and the persecution of their family.

"So many people have sacrificed and so many of them are still in jail today, but I don't see any progress or hope of change," said Win Min, who was a medical student in 1988 and fled to Thailand, from where he monitors developments. "The new generation is suffering as we suffered in the past."

President George W. Bush and his wife Laura sought to put the spotlight on the plight of Burma's 52m people yesterday. The US president had lunch in Bangkok with prominent Burmese exiles and Mrs Bush travelled to the Thai-Burma border to meet refugees.

"The American people care deeply about the people of Burma and dream for the day the people will be free," Mr Bush told dissidents and former political prisoners at an hour-long lunch.

But for all Washington's high-profile support for the Burmese democracy movement, including financial aid to exiles seeking to foment another popular uprising, several exiles urged Mr Bush to bring China into the push for change and to co-ordinate policy towards Burma with it.

The ruling Burmese junta receives substantial financial support and political cover from China, which sees its impoverished and badly governed neighbour as a valuable source of natural resources, including wood, gemstones and natural gas, necessary for its own buoyant economy.

"China holds the key," said Aung Zaw, founding editor of a Chiang Mai-based magazine, The Irrawaddy, and one of the dissidents who met Mr Bush. "This is the country that continues to protect and defend this appalling military government."

Mr Bush told the dissidents he would raise the issue of Burma with Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, during his Olympic visit to Beijing, but said forging a common position was difficult given the two countries' widely differing interests in Burma, according to several of those who attended the lunch. While the US was interested in human rights, China was interested in commerce, he told the group.

Some pro-democracy campaign groups hoped to use the coincidence of the Olympics opening ceremony and the start of the 1988 uprising to highlight China's support of the military regime, just as campaigners have successfully drawn attention to Chinese policy in Tibet.

But Aung Zaw said some Burmese activists "think it would be a strategic blunder to provoke China when there is a possibility of opening communication" with Beijing. In the past few years Chinese authorities have opened low-level contacts with some exiled pro-democracy activists and broadened their contacts inside Burma, but such dialogue has remained at a low level and does not appear to have resulted in any shift in -policy.

Still, Mark Farmaner, the head of Burma Campaign UK, said democracy activists felt it better to try to "charm and woo" Chinese officials in order to convince them that the democracy movement represents a genuine positive alternative to the generals, rather than to simply embarrass China on the eve of the Olympics.

"We might have been able to make a splash and get headlines but would it make a policy impact in China? We think not," Mr Farmaner said. "China has been starting to move, very gently, in the right direction. If we piss them off, they will just retreat into their shell again."

Few expect the Burmese people to commemorate the uprising's anniversary with a fresh outpouring against their rulers.

Security is extremely tight in Rangoon and most prominent dissidents and many of the Buddhist monks who led protests last September remain in prison. Authorities yesterday charged Zarganar, the country's most popular comedian, with five political offences. He had given interviews to foreign media criticising the regime's slow response to cyclone Nargis, which left 133,000 people dead or missing in May this year.

But Win Min remains confident that eventually the military will be forced to relax its grip. "Even if change will not come at the moment, there must be some combination of people's power movement, international pressure and moderate officers coming to the top that will bring change."

Brittle euphoria, Page 9
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008