News & Articles on Burma-Wednesday, 05 January, 2011

News & Articles on Burma
Wednesday, 05 January, 2011
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Karen New Year Celebrated Across the World
Suu Kyi, SNLD Call for Ethnic Unity
NLD Outlines Four Principles for Foreign Investment
Armed Fighting Erupts in Southern Chin State
Japanese businesses face dilemma with Myanmar
Burma army expands in Kachin, Shan states
Burmese Journalists Don't Fear Oppression
Slow down the rush to Dawei
Sanctions Aren't the Problem
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Karen New Year Celebrated Across the World
By SAW YAN NAING Wednesday, January 5, 2011

They may live in countries on the other side of world, their families may have been torn apart, they may be living in refugee camps in Thailand, but when it comes to their New Year's Day, the ethnic Karen people join together as one in wishing each other a Happy New Year.

Thousands of Karen gathered on Wednesday in Insein Township in Rangoon to celebrate the start of the 2,750th year on the Karen calendar.

Sources in Rangoon said an estimated 10,000 Karen people in Insein dressed in traditional dress to celebrate the event with traditional dances and ceremonies. They raised the Karen national flag at 6 a.m on Wednesday.

Speakers at the ceremony called for the unity of the Karen people, said one attendee.

One of the major ethnic groups of Burma, the Karen have been indigenous to the land for more than two millennia. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of Karen people still live in fear in their homeland, some hiding in the jungle while others are forced to flee to third countries. Decades of repression by the Burmese regime has resulted in more than 150,000 Karen living in refugee camps in Thailand. Some 60,000 Karen refugees have been resettled to Western countries.

Karen refugees in Thailand also celebrated their New Year on Jan. 5. Thousands of Karen in Mae La refugee camp gathered and held a festival, said a refugee at the camp. Mae La is the largest of nine refugee camps in Thailand with more than 40,000 Burmese refugees, most of whom are ethnic Karen.

Several Karen people told The Irrawaddy that they were praying for peace in Karen State where armed conflict has been a way of life for villagers for more than six decades.

Naw Barso Ghay, a Karen girl in India, said, “I wish for all the people in Karen State to have peaceful lives. I wish for there to be no more war, no more homelessness and no more families torn apart.”

Saw Gregory, a Karen university student who is studying in Thailand, said, “I miss Karen New Year in Rangoon. I hope to see all Karen people unified and celebrating Karen New Year together in Burma, one day.”

Straddling the mountains that separate Thailand and Burma, the people of Karen State have been victims of human rights abuses by Burmese government forces since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. The Rangoon government’s broken promise of ethnic autonomy and true federalism resulted in a civil war that has continued to this day.

Founded in 1947, the Karen National Union has led the fight for freedom and self-determination.

In a statement to commemorate the 2,750th Karen New Year, KNU Chairman Saw Tamla Baw said it is necessary for every Karen, wherever they live in the world, to uphold the Karen people’s cultural heritage and language, and hand it down to posterity.

“I would like to urge all Karen nationals to work in a spirit of unity and in cooperation in this year of 2750 until the Karen people gain the right to live in freedom as a nationality, while resisting the enemy endangering our Karen people,” said Tamla Baw.

Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the KNU, said, “I believe there will be a day when all Karen people gather freely together to celebrate our New Year under the Karen flag.

“Every single Karen person is responsible for this. We have to maintain the struggle for the liberation of the Karen people,” she said.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20467
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Suu Kyi, SNLD Call for Ethnic Unity
By KO HTWE Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met with six executive members of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) on Sunday to discuss the importance of ethnic unity in the face of the emergence of the Shan Nationalities Development Party (SNDP) and other parties formed to contest last year's election.

The meeting with the leaders of the SNLD, which did not take part in the election but came second only to Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) when Burma went to the polls in 1990, lasted nearly an hour and a half, according to a party spokesperson.

“We said that the SNDP doesn’t represent all ethnic Shan and that if she [Suu Kyi] could guarantee ethnic equality and self-determination, we will organize people from all walks of life in Shan State,” said SNLD spokesman Sai Leik.

Ethnic parties which won seats in the Nov. 7 election have shown no interest in joining other ethnic parties and the NLD in their calls for a second Panglong conference, modeled on the historic meeting between Suu Kyi's father, Gen Aung San, and ethnic leaders that laid the foundations for Burma's independence from British colonial rule.

“She emphasized the need to hold a second Panglong conference because many ethnic leaders are united in their desire for such talks. However, she said that it would be difficult to move forward with this plan without the cooperation of all ethnic minority parties,” said Sai Leik.

In radio interviews, the leaders of two major ethnic parties, the SNDP and the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), have said that they don't want to participate in a Panglong-type conference, he added.

Under the original agreement reached in Panglong, Shan State, in 1947, ethnic nationalities were guaranteed the right to self-determination within the framework of a federal union. The agreement was later scrapped by Burma's military when it seized power in 1962.

In the 1990 election, the SNLD won the largest number of seats in Shan State, but the party's leaders were subsequently arrested and are now serving long prison sentences in remote prisons across Burma.

The SNDP is now Burma's largest ethnic party. It won 57 of the 156 seats it contested in November, mostly in constituencies in Shan and Kachin states. The RNDP won in 35 of the 44 constituencies it contested in Arakan State. http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20466
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NLD Outlines Four Principles for Foreign Investment
By HTET AUNG Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Burma's leading democratic opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), has outlined four principles for foreign investment in the country and reaffirmed its stand on the need to review existing economic sanctions for the benefit of the people, according to a party policy statement.

“Consideration of environmental and social impacts on the people, respect for labor rights, the creation of job opportunities and technically advanced investments” are the four main priorities of the party's foreign investment policy, said the statement, which was titled “Economic Analysis” and released on Jan. 4, Burma's Independence Day.

Fireworks burst above Rangoon's landmark Shwedagon pagoda as Burmese gather to welcome the New Year 2011 at Kandawgyi park in Rangoon late on December 31, 2010. (Photo: Getty Images)
The statement also highlighted the need to address rising commodity prices and increasing joblessness due to the unequal distribution of wealth in the country.

Asked whether the party has begun to consider welcoming foreign direct investment to the country based on these principles, Win Tin, the secretary of the NLD, told The Irrawaddy: “First we want to review the impact of the sanctions on ordinary citizens. We have already said that if we find that they negatively impact the people, we will consider calling for an end to sanctions.”

He added that if the sanctions are lifted, “These four principles will be our guideline to decide whether which investments we should accept.”

He further explained that the NLD set these four principles not only to reduce the negative impacts of foreign investments on the environment of the country but also to protect the people's social and economic life.

“An example is Chinese investment in the construction of the Myitsone dam at the confluence of the N'mai and Mali rivers, where the Irrawaddy River begins,” said Win Tin. “The Irrawaddy is our country's main river and building such a dam could have negative environmental and social consequences for the country and the people.”

Win Tin also expressed concern that China's investment in Burma did little to alleviate unemployment because Chinese companies often brought their own laborers to work on their projects. Another problem, he said, was that local people are often forced to relocate because of these projects, affecting their livelihoods.

The NLD's policy statement criticized most current investment in Burma for prioritizing short-term profit and failing to consider the sustainable development of the country.

The statement pointed out that building a lot of dams, reservoirs and river bridges without considering the environment and the livelihoods of local people often did more harm than good. In many cases, cultivated lands have been damaged by these projects and farmers have lost their capital because they are forced to grow crops that are not suitable in the land and weather.

The statement also highlighted the need to establish the rule of law and transparent, accountable governance in Burma. It said that the economy must be equally open to all citizens if Burma is to develop economically.

“To build an industrialized country, there must be investments which encourage a transfer of advanced technologies, but we get nothing from China's investments,” said Win Tin.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20465
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Armed Fighting Erupts in Southern Chin State
SPDC Camp

05 January 2011: The Burmese Army stationed in Paletwa Township, Chin State, and the Arakan Liberation Army (ALA) fought at Lapahwa Camp on 3 January 2011, ending up with four Burmese and one Arakanese soldiers dead.

Joint-Secretary 2 of the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP), Khaing Thu Ka, was quoted by the Narinjara news as saying that Lapahwa Camp of Burma Army Light Infantry Battalion No. 55 was attacked during the day and all the movements could be seen clearly.

The Arakan Liberation Army is set to carry out an increasing attack against the Burmese army on the western border in the new year, according to Khaing Thu Kha.

It is said that the Burmese army strengthened, after the attack, its military force along the border to conduct offensive operations against ALA soldiers.

"We can expect an increase in the use of forced porters and other type of human rights violations against villagers with the increase of Burmese troops," said Field Director of Chin Human Rights Organisation, Pu Terah Thantluang. According to CHRO, the Burma Army has trippled its presence in some parts of Chin State since November last year.

There are at least 20 Burma Army camps in Paletwa Township.

The Arakan Liberation Army, ALP's armed wing, was formed on the Thai border in 1973. It is one of the biggest ethnic revolutionary armies on the western Burmese border. http://www.chinlandguardian.com/news-2009/1151-armed-fighting-erupts-in-southern-chin-state.html
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Japanese businesses face dilemma with Myanmar
BY TAKESHI KAMIYA STAFF WRITER
2011/01/05

Japanese businesses face a tough decision of whether to invest in a country ruled by a military junta or sit back and let China and South Korea surge ahead in a key area.

That area, Myanmar (Burma), has not seen new direct investment from Japanese companies for almost a decade.

Entering the Myanmar market could raise criticism from the United States and Europe, which maintain economic sanctions against Myanmar's oppressive military regime.

However, the government-affiliated Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) says it has received three inquiries from businesses about setting up shop in Myanmar since the country's first national elections in 20 years in November. The elections were described as a farce.

The inquiries were "remarkable in that no increase had been seen in the past several years in the number of businesses operating here," said an official of JETRO's office in Yangon (Rangoon).

JETRO figures show foreign direct investment in Myanmar jumped to $16 billion (1.3 trillion yen) between April and August 2010, almost matching the overall total between 1988 and 2009.

The heavy investors were from China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand. Their targets include natural resources, such as natural gas and rare metals.

Despite international criticism against the Myanmar government for restricting freedom of speech and causing other human rights problems, the country attracts business attention for its location, surrounded by fast-growing China and India as well as other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

China and India are reportedly developing deep-water ports for large vessels in Myanmar to use as their gateways to the sea.

About 50 Japanese companies are operating in Myanmar, the last entering in 2001. They are expanding production in such areas as clothes and footwear as orders increased from businesses trying to disperse the risks from excessive dependence on China.

Although Tokyo did not impose sanctions against Myanmar, Japanese companies have shunned new investments to protect their images. They are also wary of the unstable power supply and unpredictable policy changes.

An investment "boom" in Myanmar did occur in the latter half of the 1990s, when Mitsui & Co. developed an industrial park and former Fuji Bank agreed on setting up a joint venture bank. But the boom was short-lived.

Eitaro Kojima, head of JETRO's Yangon office, expects economic deregulation in Myanmar before ASEAN's economic integration slated for 2015.

"The Myanmar government appears to be seriously concerned that its industry will suffer a major blow when the ASEAN integration makes progress," Kojima said. "I think it will move to liberalize its economy to promote development of its industry."
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201101040230.html
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Burma army expands in Kachin, Shan states
By HTET AUNG KYAW
Published: 4 January 2011

Two additional military command zones are being created for the Burmese army in regions bordering China as tensions with ethnic armies grow.

Several major rebel groups have refused demands by the Burmese junta to transform into Border Guard Forces, a move that would see their lower-ranking troops assimilated into the Burmese army.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, a military analyst on the China-Burma border, said that two more Regional Military Commands (RMCs) may be added later in the year, on top of the two already set in place.

One has been designated for Tanaing in Kachin state, which is home to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Another will be formed in Wanhseng in the south of Shan state, close to territory controlled by the Shan State Army.

“Traditionally [the Burmese Army] never kept any troops in Wanhseng,” said Aung Kyaw Zaw. “I think the intention might be to keep full control over both Shan State Armies [South and North] as well as for security for the gas pipeline running between Mandalay and Lashio.”

The Burmese government will be keen to bolster its military presence along the planned Shwe oil and gas pipeline route, which begins in Kyaukphyu on the western coast and ends in southern China. The project will prove lucrative to the junta, and is likely to tighten relations with its northern neighbour.

China has warned the junta that it must maintain stability along the shared border following fears that fighting could erupt over the refusal by ethnic armies to transform into Border Guard Forces.

Sporadic bursts of fighting have occurred in both Kachin and Shan state in recent months, although it remains unclear whether or not this will intensify.
http://www.dvb.no/news/burma-army-expands-in-kachin-shan-states-2/13600
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Burmese Journalists Don't Fear Oppression
2011-01-04 05:42
In a Studio in Oslo, Norway a group of journalist work day and night to produce news stories sent from Burma by their colleagues inside. This is The Democratic Voice of Burma, an independent media outlet. These reporters are at great risk and recently a reporter was sentenced to 8 years in prison by the Burmese military regime.

“He was filming a bomb explosion, a deadly explosion in April 2010 in Rangoon. The Security guards arrive and he was arrested. Now he was given eight years prison time but we don’t know whether there is more charges coming. That is very usual that the Burmese’s Regime add up more charges to make your prison time longer.”

During the 2007 protests in Burma, the Democratic Voice of Burma got a lot of attention after releasing footage of the fatal shooting of a Japanese journalist. The cameraman involved in filming the event also paid a high price.

“This Japanese journalist was shot dead during the 2007 Saffron Revolution and again our cameraman captured that image and we circulated it worldwide. APF in Japan set up a Memorial and award to honor the journalist to take the risk like that journalist. So this female journalist won the award. She was given 27 years in Prison and five different charges.”

An award-winning documentary has been made about the lives of these reporters who work under great pressure.

“No matter if you are a journalist or not there are many of innocent Burmese people, maybe millions of innocent Burmese people suffering. So for the journalist they believe and they know the power and impact of media.”

The launch of a TV satellite has boosted its audience and angered the Burmese Regime.

“According to the latest survey up to 33 percent of the population of 53 million people in Burma are watching our television and listening to our radio. So that’s about let say 20, 25 million people watching.”

The journalists don’t fear the oppression from the Junta, and lack of fear may be their strongest weapon.

NTD News, Oslo, Norwayhttp://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_europe/2011-01-04/700198975549.html
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Bangkok Post:EDITORIAL
Slow down the rush to Dawei

* Published: 5/01/2011 at 12:00 AM
* Newspaper section: News

It may be too late, but the government should listen carefully to the reasonable voices warning against throwing great Thai resources at plans to build a new industrial complex in Burma. The push to back the project at Dawei has won powerful allies. For one, there is Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who returned from his first official trip to Burma three months ago, enthusiastic about the chance to build a port, virtually from scratch. For another, Thailand's biggest and most influential companies are determined to move into Burma to work on the Indian Ocean scheme.

But there are increasing voices questioning the rush to Dawei - the regime's name for the town of Tavoy. For one, Burma is still a despotic, brutal military dictatorship. It held elections of a sort late last year but even the United Nations saw through the sham of a vote that only sought to legitimise military rule. The regime released No.1 political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, but continues to keep thousands of others under lock and key for the "crime" of criticising the regime. As a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the government should question doing such big business with Burma, not enthusiastically supporting it.

But clearly, Burmese and Thai officials at lower levels have done their work carefully. Within days of Mr Abhisit's return from Burma, the military regime awarded a huge construction contract to Italian-Thai Development Plc. Under the 10-year, 400-billion-baht agreement, Ital-Thai will virtually take up residence in Burma. From almost nothing, the Thai firm will oversee the transformation of Dawei into a thriving industrial zone and international port with all the necessary infrastructure.

This is the 21st century version of the only major government-sanctioned project of this kind in Thailand, the Eastern Seaboard. It is clear that some of the growing pains of the Rayong-centred seaboard programme are now driving some big Thai companies out of Thailand. By moving to Burma they can leave behind the environmental problems of Map Ta Phut and Rayong courts.

This is the second major reason to slow the stampede to Dawei. Environmental activists have questioned whether the Thai firms are fleeing the Eastern Seaboard exactly because they intend to make no effort to set up clean industry in Burma. Buntoon Siethasirote, director of the Good Governance for Social Development and the Environment Foundation, pointed out that Burma has no decent laws on protecting the environment. The Burmese military leaders have a history of cooperation in shady business deals. There is grave doubt whether the generals would even make an attempt to enforce any sort of acceptable standards if that interfered with profits.

And now, senior officials of the bureaucracy have questioned the government's all-out support for an Andaman Sea project at Dawei. They note correctly that this has turned into a zero-sum contest between Dawei and a formerly planned port project further to the south at Pak Bara, in Satun province.

In short, what Dawei and Burma gain, Pak Bara and Thailand lose.

Private businesses have their own agenda, but there are legitimate and pressing questions about the Thai government's strong backing for the Dawei port plans. The government should slow its rush to Burma, until important political and economic questions have clearer answers. http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/214463/slow-down-the-rush-to-dawei
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CONTRIBUTOR
Sanctions Aren't the Problem
By DR ZARNI Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Following the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest this past November, a chorus of vociferous calls for the end to sanctions against the military-ruled Burma has been reverberating internationally. Business lobbies and the global development industry have jumped at the public relations opportunity that came with the generals’ decision to release the world’s best-known political dissident.

One immediately senses the seductive nature of the anti-sanctions narrative, designed to convey a mixture of moral and strategic concerns in the same breath. Let’s consider the promise of this new policy narrative against the empirical realities on the ground.

Dr Zarni (m.zarni@lse.ac.uk) is research fellow on Burma at the London School of Economics and Political Economics.
I was one of the foot soldiers among the Burmese dissidents who helped build the international campaign for sanctions against the Burmese regime in the 1990s. A decade later, I publicly challenged what was then known as the (pro-)sanctions orthodoxy, particularly when it became apparent that Washington’s blanket sanctions enacted in 2003 were about to kill off the fledgling garment industry, which employed a fair number of ordinary Burmese.

Seven years on, here I am speaking out against the new anti-sanctions orthodoxy. This orthodoxy opts to overlook the elephant in the room, namely the excessively predatory and callous ruling military elite and the state organs which are used as an instrument of rent-seeking and repression.

Meanwhile, Western punitive measures including sanctions and denial of loans and development aid are scapegoated in this orthodoxy. Sanctions and associated policy measures are held responsible for the economic woes and miserable human conditions that envelop communities throughout Burma.

The new anti-sanctions advocates are promoting, either naively or self-servingly, foreign aid, trade and investment as the panacea for the country’s ills, while pinning hope on the emergence of a Burmese “middle class.” Being the parasites of autocratic or feudal political systems, Southeast Asia’s middle classes lack the progressive potential for democratization and meaningful development, unlike the original bourgeois of the old Europe, which brought down the feudal ruling elites and helped democratize institutions of power and wealth. Bangkok’s Thai middle class, which greeted the Red Shirts with scorn and disdain, and autocratic Singapore’s well-fed and -housed middle class immediately spring to mind.

The new anti-sanctions orthodoxy is pervasive among players with ties to foreign and local business interests, the global development industry and free-market ideologues dressed up as Burma experts, media personnel, diplomats and academics. In promoting this new policy discourse, they are joined by experts in international affairs and strategic studies, especially from countries which have most to gain from re-normalizing Burma’s half-century-old dictatorship.

Be that as it may, who in their right mind would object to genuinely progressive social and economic evolution, which will in due course benefit the locals while serving external commercial and strategic interests, without conflict, confrontation, upheaval, and bloodshed?

This school of evolutionary social change counsels the opposition to be more patient and the oppressed masses to offer their unconditional collaboration with their oppressors.

There is one major problem with this new orthodoxy, however. Its logic of gradual change through engagement, trade and development aid and loans has no empirical basis in the history of meaningful social change in dictatorships, East or West, where States and ruling elites were both criminally negligent towards citizens’ well-being and violently repressive to the population. In fact, the current anti-sanctions lobby is dangerously ill-informed about the concrete realities on the ground in today’s Burma.

Specifically, the abstract idea of evolutionary change in Burma ignores the particular characteristics of the country’s dictatorship that prevent investment from benefiting the masses. These include the troubling feudal personality traits of the ruling senior and junior generals, the deeply structural nature of political and ethnic conflicts, the lack of any real—as opposed to anticipated—potential for change through the emerging move towards “civilianized” military rule post-election, the complete absence of any viable efforts on the part of the regime to seek lasting peace in the country, the non-existence of policy space for both existing and emerging political processes and institutions, and last but not least, the utter lack of technocratic competence and genuine concerns for public welfare among decision makers.

Some have argued that the post-election Burma carries seeds of evolutionary change with it.

First, these same advocates have also held up the military’s unmistakably regressive Constitution as “something better than outright dictatorship” (without any written formal guidelines), even when there is absolutely no change in the balance of institutional power in the post-election set up. Burma’s “Constitutional Military Rule” betrays both the letter and spirit of constitutionalism. For it legalizes, legitimizes, enshrines, ring-fences and delimits the de facto military rule—providing a sharp contrast to the essence of constitutionalism, which is to curb the arbitrary power of any ruling institution or class.

Second, the military’s ideological and institutional orientation has taken an unmistakably feudal turn, which makes it inconceivable for any reform potential arising from this very institution of power. It also structurally prevents trade or investment reaching beyond the hands of the feudal lords in modern soldier's uniforms and their cronies. Over the past two decades, promoting the three dead warrior-kings of the long-collapsed Burmese empires as the military’s role models, the regime has subjected the military and the country’s officialdom to a regressive process of re-feudalization in terms of values, norms and worldviews.

Third, much has been made of the fact that the military is creating the trappings of a functioning democracy, namely political parties, a parliamentary system with different houses and nominal division of power. Realistically speaking, however, it is impossible to imagine a scenario where any serious reform initiatives or policies can be tabled, much less debated within the military’s parliament, which is bound to be the military’s rubber-stamp. These are obstacles to the democratization of political and economic spheres.

To begin with, the regime has permitted the largest pro-democracy political party, namely the National Democratic Front, made up of NLD renegades, a token inclusion in its official politics with only 1.5 percent of the total parliamentary seats, while declaring its own Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) a landslide winner with almost 80 percent of the contested seats, ensuring that it has near total control of what goes on in the parliamentary houses.

The ardent believers in the potential for parliamentary and policy space inherent in the form of a parliamentary system have chosen to overlook the type of anti-intellectual, anti-democratic professional practices and political culture in which the regime’s MPs, both “civilianized” soldiers and their brethren still in service, have been steeped. These men have spent decades learning the art of climbing the military and bureaucratic ladders solely through their unquestioning loyalty and utter obedience to their superior officers, executing orders, right or wrong. Therefore, the chances of the rubber-stamp parliament and its legislative processes influencing regime’s MP-elects (including ex-military officers, their cronies and other regime supporters) to think and act in a democratic manner that befit parliamentarians are absolutely non-existent.

Fourth, the issue of leadership transition has often been cited as an impetus for unconditional engagement with the military regime in hopes that the junior generals, in their late 50s and 60s, will be more open-minded, reform-oriented and forward-thinking. It is inconceivable that senior generals who are self-inflicted with militarist, feudal and (internally) ethno-imperialist worldviews will leave the reins of power in the hands of the juniors who think, feel and act significantly different from themselves.

To be sure, the regime is not a monolith and individual generals do have their differences in ideas, approaches, and interests. However, empirically and historically speaking, when it comes to liberalizing politics and redistributing wealth, Burmese military officers by and large have acted as a corporate entity, that is, a soldiering class with class views and interests.

Sixth, anti-sanctions advocates commonly place responsibility on Western sanctions—specifically, the denial of development aid and low level of humanitarian assistance—for the sorry state of human conditions in the military-ruled Burma. Usually, they point out that upwardly mobile Cambodia and Laos receive as much as 10 times more than Burma in foreign aid per capita, and make the case for increased aid for Burma.

And yet the same aid and trade advocates conveniently overlook the fact that the generals purchased from Russia a second squadron of state-of-the-art MiG-29 fighter-jets at a cost of nearly US $600 million within days after Joseph Stiglitz delivered his world-class economic advice to a group of junior generals in the regime’s capital of Naypyidaw, the “Abode of Kings,” that their country’s agricultural sector needs massive state investment. As the Burmese economist Dr U Myint has observed, Burma’s agri-based economic structure has remained virtually unchanged since the 1930s.

Seventh, these advocates of ending sanctions point out contemporary “developmental states” such as China and Vietnam as development models for Burma to emulate, de-linking freedoms from economic development. “Noble obligation” is a notion that has come to be associated with paternalistic ruling classes. Even if one disdains its inherent arrogance and usurpation of state power as a ruling ideology, it at least has some redeeming qualities. One-party autocracies in Beijing and Hanoi do make serious efforts to improve the material lot of the peoples under their respective rules, even when they deprive the latter of any meaningful voice in the country’s political and policy matters.

No such sentiment has been detected among the military leadership of Burma, either in “normal” or in catastrophic times (for instance, during Cyclone Nargis). It is difficult to swallow the painful truth that public well-being is not a policy priority as far as the ruling generals in Burma are concerned. The fact that less than 2 percent of the country’s national budget is allocated to the combined fields of public health and education speaks volume.

The latest Economic Intelligence Unit’s report on Burma for January 2011 observes thus: “In terms of fiscal policy, the government is likely to continue to focus on spending heavily on the military, and it will do little in the way of implementing policies to support households and businesses.” The regime—and the predatory and increasingly feudalist state institutions—will, in reality, remain the insurmountable obstacle to the trickle-down economic logic of the anti-sanctions lobby.

Still, in place of any concerted pressure on the regime towards putting public welfare on its policy radar, these anti-sanctions advocates from the business lobby and aid industry, both from the West and from Asia, offer unconditional engagement with the “stupid and dense” generals, to borrow Lee Kuan Yew’s adjectives in his specific reference to the Burmese business partners of his city-state.

The anti-sanctions lobby does get one thing right, however.

The unwavering backing of the Burmese dictatorship by its Asian neighbors—China, India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean)—has rendered Western sanctions and grassroots boycotts ineffectual and prevented them from playing the kind of strategically impactful role which they played in the successful fight against apartheid in South Africa. As Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at Oxford University, pointed out in a recent live dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi at the London School of Economics, the efforts at democratization across Eastern Europe succeeded partly because the external geopolitical and ideological environment was conducive to internal struggles for democratization across the region.

The unfolding tragedy in Burma is that no such favorable external environment exists. Quite to the contrary, Burma’s economically predatory neighbors treat the country as merely a brothel where they can gratify their need for cheap labor and natural resources and as a strategic asset. They find it against their interests for the military regime to be replaced with a democratic government responsive to citizens’ livelihood needs. For instance, only a dictatorship with absolute disregard for public well-being would have signed a multi-billion dollar deal such as the Dawei Development Project, which allows a Thai-Italian conglomerate to set up, among other things, socially and ecologically harmful refineries which will emit massive pollutants into the sky above Burma’s southern coast line. According to an article in The International Herald Tribune (“An Industrial Project That Could Change Myanmar,” Nov. 26, 2010), Thailand’s Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, assured his fellow Thais in his weekly television address two months ago that dirty industries are moving to Burma: “Some industries are not suitable to be located in Thailand. This is why they decided to set up there [in Dawei].” How lovely!

There is little wonder, then, that the future for the peoples of Burma looks rather grim. They are not simply up against their country's “stupid” generals and their repressive security forces, but also at the mercy of unscrupulous foreign interests.

The anti-sanctions orthodoxy should be understood for what it is—the promotion of the West’s strategic national and corporate interests, which will further entrench military rule, in whatever guise, by giving it a veneer of normalcy and acceptability. Ending the sanctions now will not prove to be an effective move towards political and economic development for the people.
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http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=20459&page=4