Life among the émigrés

The latest from The Economist on the coming election in Burma, with a concluding paragraph that quotes from a commentary by Yeni that I edited  a couple of weeks ago (glad to see someone out there is reading this stuff).

When I asked Yeni if he had seen the article, we joked about the use of the word “émigrés” to describe the Irrawaddy gang. We agreed that it sounded rather romantic–as if we were sitting around cafes in Paris, and not in an office in Chiang Mai.

Here is the paragraph in question, which turns to the subject of the recent spate of privatizations in Burma:

In another change the junta has started a remarkable if stealthy process of selling state assets: ports, buildings in Yangon vacated by its shift of capital in 2005, petrol stations, telecoms firms and a share in the national airline. This is hardly a gesture to economic reform—the sales are cooked-up deals benefiting junta cronies. But nor does it seem just the desperation of a cash-strapped regime. Rather, in the analysis of Yeni, of the Irrawaddy, a magazine published by émigrés in Thailand, it is the “formal transfer of the nation’s wealth into the hands of an entrenched elite”, ahead of an election and the implementation of a new constitution which, in theory, should allow greater competition for assets. This elite is “pre-emptively buying up everything in sight”. It has a similar attitude to competition of the democratic kind.

カテゴリー:Burma

NY Times cites Irrawaddy (with link)

January 9, 2010

Myanmar Is Reported to Sentence 2 to Death

By THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — A court in Myanmar has sentenced a retired military officer and a Foreign Ministry official to death for leaking details of a secret trip to North Korea by top government officials, according to news reports that cited lawyers in the country.

There has been no mention in the official media in military-run Myanmar of the court decision, which was said to have been handed down Thursday and was first reported on The Irrawaddy, an exile news Web site based in Thailand that covers Myanmar.

Another Foreign Ministry official received 15 years in prison for a related offense, according to The Irrawaddy and Reuters.

The case appeared to highlight the repressive government’s concern about a number of leaks and lapses in recent years, including the publication of minutes of high-level military meetings and photographs of extensive tunnel systems reportedly built by North Korean engineers in the country’s administrative capital, Naypyidaw.

“Clearly there are leaks,” said Win Min, an expert on Myanmar at Payap University in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. “It’s a sign that there are a lot of people even within the military who do not like the government, and they’re trying to protest in different ways.”

The three men sentenced Thursday were reported to have been arrested in July after photographs and documents of a visit to North Korea by Gen. Thura Shwe Mann, the third-highest-ranking officer in the junta, appeared on Web sites run by critics of the government living abroad.

The extensive collection of photographs showed General Shwe Mann visiting military facilities, including a factory for Scud missiles.

North Korea has a nuclear program, and experts believe that Myanmar, formerly called Burma, has been seeking to establish a nuclear program as well. They say, however, that the government lacks the technical ability to develop a sophisticated program.

“It is not clear if North Korea is involved in any nuclear activities in Burma,” said Bertil Lintner, who has written extensively on both Myanmar and North Korea. “What we know with certainty is that North Korea and Burma have established a secret alliance and that North Korea has delivered military-related equipment to Burma.”

Reuters identified the two men sentenced to death as Maj. Win Naing Kyaw, who is retired, and U Thura Kyaw, a Foreign Ministry clerk; they were charged under a broad law that covers threats to national security. The third person sentenced was identified by The Irrawaddy as U Pyan Sein, who was convicted of violating an act covering the use of illegal electronic devices.

The sentences reflect what many experts describe as the paranoia of Myanmar’s senior general, Than Shwe, who appears continually concerned about threats to his power. Five years ago he moved the seat of government from Yangon, formerly Rangoon, to Naypyidaw, a more remote location, in part to defend against potential outside attacks.

General Than Shwe recently confirmed that elections would take place this year — the first in two decades. The death sentences may be a warning to potential dissenters, analysts said.

“He doesn’t have a choice — he has to call elections because he already announced they would go ahead,” Mr. Win Min said. “But he is still worried about threats from within.”

Death sentences in Myanmar are often commuted to life in prison, but the court decision remains a potent reminder for those thinking of stepping out of line, Mr. Win Min said.

カテゴリー:Burma

NY Times Archive — Burmese Revolt Seen as Spontaneous

An interesting report on the situation in Burma from the week before the coup that installed the current regime in power. Note the prominence of Japan as the key international player, and the absence of Aung San Suu Kyi as the leader of the opposition.

Burmese Revolt See as Spontaneous

By ROBERT PEAR, Special to the New York Times

Published: Saturday, September 10, 1988

Experts on Burma portray the upheaval there as a spontaneous revolution by people craving democracy, and they say the only mystery is why it took the Burmese so long to rise up against an oppressive, authoritarian Government.

Prof. Josef Silverstein at Rutgers University, one of the few Burma scholars in the United States, said: ”This is one of the few examples of a pure popular revolution that we are seeing anywhere in the world. There are no leaders, there is no organization and there is no international movement outside the country pushing the people one way or the other.”

”What surprised me is that the Burmese Government has held on for so long, that this upheaval did not come at an earlier point,” said Mr. Silverstein, a political scientist. U.S. Evacuates Dependents American experts assessed the situation there as the United States today evacuated 46 relatives of American Embassy employees in the midst of growing instability. They flew from Rangoon, the capital, to Bangkok, Thailand, on a commercial airliner. State Department officials said that another group of about the same size would leave Burma on Saturday. Before the evacuation, there were about 150 American embassy personnel and dependents in Burma.

Charles E. Redman, the State Department spokesman, said, ”I’m not sure that there are any ministries functioning these days” in Rangoon. Nevertheless, he said, the American Embassy will continue to operate so it can send information to Washington.

Demonstrators in cities and towns across Burma, including many students, are demanding the immediate resignation of the president, U Maung Maung, and the establishment of an interim government to pave the way for multiparty democracy. Mr. Maung Maung is the leader of the country’s only political party, the Burma Socialist Program Party, which seized power in a military coup and has ruled for 26 years.

John H. Badgley, curator of the Southeast Asia collection at the Cornell University library, said Mr. Maung Maung would be lucky to retain power for another week. Government ‘Basically Defunct’

”The Government is basically defunct,” Mr. Badgley said. ”There is a genuine collapse of government as we know it.” In Mandalay, he said, a committee of students and monks under 30 years old is maintaining order and performing other functions of government.

Many people, including employees of Burmese embassies in Singapore, Japan and other countries, have resigned from the Socialist Program Party. Information reaching the State Department here indicates that scores of Burmese Government employees and at least several hundred members of the Burmese armed forces joined anti-Government demonstrations in Rangoon this week.

Mr. Badgley visited Burma last December and again in January and February of this year. ”I got a sense of a very short fuse on a stick of dynamite, and I was surprised that it had not exploded long ago,” Mr. Badgley said in an interview.

U Ne Win, who ruled Burma from 1962 until his resignation in July of this year, led the country into isolation and economic ruin by following what he described as ”the Burmese road to socialism.” Mr. Badgley said this was ”an autarkic ideology patterned after the economic systems of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.” Stalin’s ‘Ideological Framework’

It became clear as early as 1963 that Mr. Ne Win did not want to bring Burma into the mainstream of the international economy through trade and development projects with other countries, Mr. Badgley said. For the last quarter-century, he said, ”Burma’s leaders have been anti-Communist, but they viewed the economy with the ideological framework of Stalin.”

American experts on Burma said they believed some type of provisional government would soon emerge, probably with political and financial backing from Japan.

”Key Japanese officials want to stabilize the situation in Burma, hope Burma will open its markets to foreign investment and have indicated a preference that U Tin Oo should emerge as the leader of Burma,” Mr. Badgley said. ”In foreign policy, this may be the most aggressive political maneuver Japan has engaged in since World War II.” Mr. Tin Oo was chief of staff of the Burmese Army when he was removed by Mr. Ne Win in 1976.

Several Burmese opposition leaders said today that they had established a provisional government under the leadership of U Nu, who was ousted in the military coup 26 years ago, but diplomats in Rangoon said it was not immediately clear whether the maneuver would succeed.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said today that President Reagan should take immediate action to withhold American aid from the Government of Mr. Maung Maung.

”At such time as a democratic government is established, we should release the monies and offer increased support as well,” said Mr. Moynihan, a New York Democrat.

The United States gave Burma almost $14.3 million in aid last year: $7 million for economic development, $7 million for anti-drug programs and $260,000 for military training. Moynihan Urges Aid Cutoff

Mr. Moynihan said the United States should not provide any more money to the Burmese Army because it had ”murdered peaceful demonstrators.” He also said the Burmese armed forces ”use our assistance” to spray carcinogenic herbicides on members of ethnic minority groups in opium-growing areas of northern Burma.

Diplomats at the Burmese Embassy here did not return telephone calls asking for comment on Mr. Moynihan’s charges.

Discontent has been spreading in Burma for years. But Mr. Silverstein said the situation became intolerable for the Burmese people last September, when the Government took currency measures that had the effect of reducing the value of assets that many people held in cash by 70 to 80 percent.

The Government said the step was designed to curb narcotics traffic and the black market in Burma. But it set off protests by students, who have been in the forefront of political activity since they fought for Burma’s independence from Britain in the late 1940′s.

カテゴリー:Burma

Behind Closed Doors at “Chilston II”

This is an analysis I wrote about the Burmese sanctions vs. engagement debate nearly a decade ago. It’s disturbing how little progress has been made since then. In fact, there has been none at all. I looked it up on The Irrawaddy website this morning because I vaguely recalled writing something about former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s desire to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. I thought about it because I remembered slyly slipping in an anti-sanctions message, suggesting that Wahid, who was regarded as pretty unpredictable, might advise Suu Kyi to drop her calls for sanctions as way to throw the junta off balance. This is the part I was looking for:

It is intriguing to imagine what advice Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, who during a recent state visit to Burma expressed a desire to meet with NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, might have offered to his sister in the struggle for Asian democracy if they had had a chance to speak. No doubt Wahid, who has plenty of experience dealing with overweening generals, and whose presidency to date has been characterized by a decidedly unpredictable style of leadership, would have offered some highly original counsel. With support for sanctions in doubt, Wahid might have recommended that the NLD make a preemptive strike: withdraw the call for sanctions, and watch the regime scramble to think up excuses for refusing to speak with the opposition. If the SPDC failed to make a comparable concession, the result, ironically, could be a broader consensus in favor of tough action against the regime, as it becomes glaringly apparent that the generals are solely responsible for the country’s political impasse. Far from being tantamount to throwing in the towel, Wahid might argue, such a move could be seen as throwing down a gauntlet that the regime could not refuse to pick up.

Of course, none of this has come to pass, and Burma remains as desperate as ever for change.

カテゴリー:Burma