Over the top

The ‘Freedom in the World – 2004’ report by Freedom House stated that ‘The junta rules by decree, controls the judiciary, suppresses all basic rights, and commits human rights abuses with impunity. Military officers hold all cabinet positions, and active or retired officers hold all top posts in all ministries. Official corruption is reportedly rampant both at the higher and local levels.’

The mighty and mysterious junta, i.e. ruling military council, in Myanmar was officially known as State Peace and Development Council. The SPDC was made-up of 11 Generals (all of them Burman Buddhists) who were then serving in the Tatmadaw or Myanmar Armed Forces. The now ‘supposedly-extinct’ junta under the leadership of Thein Sein had initiated a seven-step ‘roadmap to democracy‘ in 2003, whereby the 2008 Constitutional referendum and 2010 General Election marked the fourth and fifth steps respectively. Little shocking and pleasing to know the tyrannical junta, which was globally ill-famous for its unconditional repressive reign, treaded on such a merciful track.

Considering the present much-altered prevalent scenario in Myanmar, the big question is: Whether the military junta in Myanmar has practically ceased to maintain its identity after it was disbanded following hand-over of power to the new civilian government after the 2010 general election? The obvious answer according to the state official proclamations is: Yes! However, the Western media has wriggled facts to give a contrary viewpoint – the military junta still exists as it was before the preceding general election, with its powers untouched if not augmented, but it has merely taken-up a new form. Today its members have dissipated within the 2 newly formed political parties- Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and National Unity Party (NUP), and keeping their former fraternal bond intact. These 2 political parties are currently holding absolute majority in the newly elected Myanmar parliament. The erstwhile members of SPDC still wield extensive sway among the elected Cabinet, which comprise their lackeys i.e junior officers and trustworthy civilians. According to credible sources, it is mere 4 out of the 30 ministers of the new Cabinet who have no military background. Hereby am putting forth two rational questions that contextually are more relevant and meaningful.  First, whether or not the tyrannical junta regime in Myanmar has given way to the elected Parliament? Second, the reasons for yes or no to the former question?

The situational answer to the first question is- partial Yes. The former junta regime is gradually dishing-out power to the elected parliamentarians. Though at present, the disbanded junta members themselves or their protégées are holding almost all the ministries. However symbolic space in the redressed elite-ruling council is being granted to a handful elected civilians. With the passage of time junta is more likely to hand-over more number of auxiliary ministries to the elected civilians and also attempt to conciliate with the democratic heartthrob of Western media- Aung San Suu Kyi.

Also answering the second question from a situational perspective, it is to be acknowledged that the turn-around actions executed by junta clearly imply it endeavored to reap democracy at the cost of its earlier supreme dictatorship. Why such? First, the international pressure was mounting with every passing day. The sanctions (like embargo on exported items from Myanmar, entry ban of selected officials, ban on sale of arms etc.) imposed unilaterally and multilaterally by individual countries and international/regional organizations on account of dismal human rights situation in the country had accumulated to a choking point. The second, a democratic government is the only legitimate instrument that has the potent to give the elusive members of junta much-needed legitimacy and protection under international laws to cling on to power. The 2011 Arab Spring has deeply instilled the idea among the people across the world that autocratic regimes need to be imminently replaced by elected democratic governments. If the Junta would have continued to exist, it would have been extremely difficult on its part to withstand the mounting internal dissent and external pressure. Third, this was the best possible way-out of the self-imposed isolation and bring-up international integration. The Junta knew it could not perennially rely on its ‘closest ally’ China for meeting the state needs in this highly globalized world. Plus it knew the value of having new strategic and economic partners in the face of changing times. Fourth, a ‘military-controlled’ democratic government is the best mode for further wielding individual and collective sway of the ‘supposedly-defunct’ junta within the state. Today the structured distribution of power and more number of subjects within the ambit of governance is giving the reclusive junta members a reason to smile. Last but not the least, the undertaken actions have bestowed the former junta members with the required legality to individually strike lucrative financial deals under the civilian garb. The opening up of the precious Pandora’s Box has undoubtedly drawn much attention of the business-minded capitalists from the region and elsewhere.

However the growing internal discontent among various ethnic and political groups within the state can anyday flare-up the seemingly tranquil transition to democracy. The jitters of the military rulers to go for an immediate full-fledged transition to an open democratic society is clearly visible from the recent deportation of Chinese-Malaysian Actress Michelle Yeoh, who is playing the role of Aung San Suu Kyi in an upcoming film- The Lady, straight from the Yangon International Airport before she could meet Suu Kyi. If the Tatmadaw lets loose its grip over the societal proceedings not only the natives but people from across the world will practically gung ho to champion the cause of pluralist democracy in Myanmar, which ‘The Lady’ has been tirelessly fighting all her life. The day is not far when all the military rulers will apologetically give a standing ovation to this brave lady; the very day junta will actually disappear into the thin air.

~ Hriday Sarma is a News Editor at Digital Publishing Solutions Pioneer, Aptara Inc.

The world’s most famous political prisoner was released today amidst jubilant supporters, hundreds and thousands of them, who flocked at her residence. Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and Amnesty International’s most prominent prisoner of conscience was under house arrest with the latest period of detention spanning 7 1/2 years. She spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest or in jail.

Supporters flock as Aung San Suu Kyi is freed

In 1990, in her essay Freedom from Fear, she famously set right the equation between power and corruption expressed first by Lord Acton in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887.  Suu Kyi said–

‘It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it……..Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as ‘grace under pressure’ – grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.’

Grace is Aung San Suu Kyi today.

This week an international meeting on trafficking of people has been occurring in the Burmese town of Bagan. It is rare to hear a UN staffer congratulate the Burmese government. It is not so much their violent nature but their incompetence which seems often to hold them back.

But one Mr. Parajuli was found to be congratulating the Burmese government of six good years of fighting human trafficking in what is known as the COMMIT process, a grouping dedicated to combatting this trade amongst the six nations of the greater Mekong sub region.

Mr. Parajuli stated a number of measures that the junta had taken to fight trafficking all of them punitive or legal. He did however briefly mention the phrase ‘route causes’. A term which is almost always followed or preceded by ‘tackle’ and is usually as hollow as the greetings at the beginning of such speeches.

But in Burma this is a big question, why is trafficking in persons such a big issue?

I have met quite a few people who have been ‘trafficked’ they are as you’d imagine are usually poor, hard working individuals but on the whole they had not a bad word about the ‘trafficker’ or any more of a bad word than you or I would have for an over priced travel agent. And that’s exactly how I was shot down last time I was quizzing someone on ‘trafficking’ in Malaysia (a big destination), “to you they are traffickers, to us they are travel agents.”

The route causes are however undoubtedly years of economic mismanagement. In Burma cars, phones or pretty much anything useful including gas for cooking is expensive. The only things that are cheap are cigarettes, alcohol, illegal drugs and people’s labour. The irony with the gas is that Burma is a massive exporter of the stuff, with pipelines going, or being built to all of her rapidly developing neighbours.  Burma has been labelled by Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz as suffering from the ‘mineral curse’. A curse more commonly associated with African nations than those at the apex of the future powerhouses of the world. But it seems that trafficking in  Burma will only increase as the economy in Burma shows no sign of shaking its dubious status as ‘failed’.

Corruption is endemic in Burma in a manner which makes most other south Asian nations seem relatively uncorrupted or the corrupters petty criminals. Some of the most shocking corruption is very much government orchestrated for in Burma everything with value has some pay off for the army; the most remarkable scam is the way in  which the gas is sold, where by the government accounts show the gas being sold on the ‘offiicial’ exchange rate which puts the ‘kyat’ at around 6 to the dollar whilst the ‘unofficial’ rate is closer to a thousand. So while they give 6 ‘kyat’ for every dollar they earn selling gas into the nations coffers, roughly 990 ‘kyat’ is ferreted away into a Singaporean bank account for the junta and their own ends.

I could go on, but the sad fact is that people will continue to be exported along with the minerals for as long as Burma is kept in a state of under development and backwardness by the ‘route cause’ in chief; the military government.

Joseph Allchin

Burma watchers get used to hearing about the grizzly punishments meted out upon the countries dissenting voices. This week however the military junta returned to worrying ways when it sentenced two of its own to death. Others were sentenced under Burma’s seemingly ludite ‘electronics act’. Which is a surprisingly broad act that can be applied to anyone who uses anything ‘tech’.

Majors Win Naing Kyaw and Thura Kyaw were given the death sentence for leaking a report about a weapons shopping trip that a senior junta member made to North Korea and of details of a bizarre tunnel network that Pyongyang is apparently helping to build in Burma, whilst the electronics act was applied to 3 others presumably for having some part in the act of transmitting the data.

It comes only days after a journalist, Hla Hla Win, was jailed for 20 years simply for working for my own organisation, the Democratic Voice of Burma. He was convicted on new year’s eve, a day before the country’s promised election year on its ‘road map to democracy’.

Which is what is so troubling about such sensitivity towards information, the horrible truth, not unlike discovering that, as suspected, one’s wife is having an affair, is that the junta probably have no intention of delivering anything resembling accountable governance or freedom of expression and association.There has, as yet been no official date for an election, with speculation and rumour variously suggesting March or October. With most opposition groups refusing to take part, largely due to the last mass exercise in polling, a referendum on a 2008 constitution, that was roundly dismissed.

Indeed in keeping with Burma’s dictatorial traditions it was illegal to campaign against the constitution and passed with over 98% of the supposed vote, indeed people I have met say that shortly after they were battered by cyclone Nargis survivors names were taken and simply marked as yes votes by the village head, at the behest of the millitary. The document is deeply ‘undemocratic’ insuring that military personnel cannot be prosecuted by civilian courts and guaranteeing that at least 25% of parliamentary seats be assigned to the military amongst other such legal offenses to the notion of democracy.

The serious millitary projects such as the tunnels and the other Korean acquisitions also betray an insincerity towards civilian government. Ever since the pivotal protests of the late 80’s and early 90’s when Aung San Suu Kyi emerged as the leader of the democratic opposition the military has drastically increased numbers of men and expenditure on foreign hardware. The relationship with North Korea has predictably lead to fears that the generals want to join the nuclear club. All have ultimately been to perpetuate the institution of military rule.

People wait eagerly for the ‘elections’, whether with genuine hope or just for any sense of change, anything to break the monotony of military rule, but as two men wait to meet their end for leaking a document, what is probably best, as Robert Mugabe used to say about himself; ‘Watch what I do, not what I say’.

Joseph Allchin

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime came up with two interesting points these last few days. The first, startlingly, but none the less quite plausibly was from the bodies head, Antonio Costas, who claimed that drug money may have bailed out banks during the financial melt down, as banks were struggling to find ‘liquidity’ or inter bank loans. Costas claimed that money from drugs may have been absorbed by the banking system to tide them over. Costas claimed in the UK Observer that as much as $352 billion of drug profits were ‘absorbed’ by banks threatened by collapse. If his figures are correct it is not substantially less than the U.S. treasury bail out.

The same organisation also reported on ‘troubling’ developments in Burma where opium cultivation had climbed for a third consecutive year, doubling its cultivation since 2006. Burma is the world’s second largest producer of heroin and illegal opiates after Afghanistan. This comes only a few weeks after it released yearly figures indicating the continued unhindered rise of methamphetamine production in the country with new trade routes opening up to the west into India and beyond. This came despite apparent considerable efforts by international drug agencies, yet UNODC’s Gary Lewis maintained in interview to me that the government of Burma, as many allege, are not working in collusion with drug producers. This is an issue and accusation that has been elaborated by Swedish author and Burma expert Bertil Lintner through decades of research and publication of the very interesting ‘Merchants of Madness’ book. His accusations are that the Burmese junta tolerates and even colludes with allied armed groups in the production of drugs. It is an accusation given credibility by the undiminished nature of the industry in the country and the fiscal failures of virtually all industries in Burma apart from fossil fuel extraction, drugs and people smuggling.

Indeed the illegal drugs industry was hardly impeded by the global economic slowdown, with amphetamines continuing to grow in consumption and production. It is considered to be one of the world’s top five export industries.

So could we now say that not only has the ‘war on drugs’ been lost but the industry, despite being almost entirely in the hands of ‘criminals’, has also saved the global economy? Adding yet another very compelling argument for the legalisaton, regulation and taxation of this lucrative industry. This apparent bank ‘bail out’ give us a window into the tax dollars that the world is losing to the unregulated criminal economy.

Burma is a case in point of an economy where taxation doesn’t follow money or reflect relative wealth and it is also a society where social welfare, education and most sorts of justice are in dire needs, here more than anywhere we can see the need for regulation as markets fund war lords and gangsters as opposed to health care, education and the betterment of society. If Costas is right it is also the collateral in that ‘war’, drug users and the thousands who suffer and perish as a result of its criminal status who have truly paid the price for the bail out.

Joseph Allchin