International Praise for ‘Reformed’ Burma Is Premature – And Dangerous
ASIA--PACIFIC, 4 Feb 2013
Hailing Burma a success only encourages the president to think he can get away with continued human rights abuses.
It’s a country ruled by a military-backed government that came to power in rigged elections. Its army is committing war crimes against ethnic minorities, international aid to tens of thousands of people displaced by attacks by its army is blocked by the government, and hundreds of political prisoners are in jail. Reports of rape as a weapon of war are increasing, and there are new allegations that white phosphorus was used against peaceful protesters who were trying to protect their land, which has been confiscated by the government.
But this is not how most of the international community likes to describe Burma. This week Hillary Clinton cited Burma as one of her successes during her term as secretary of state. It is no surprise therefore that Human Rights Watch, which also published its annual report on human rights this week, has criticised what it calls “international oversell and hasty praise in the face of continued serious human rights abuses”.
It should be expected that after so many years of extreme repression, there would be excitement about any kind of opening up in Burma. But the speed with which the international community moved to relax sanctions, promote trade and heap praise on every small reform or promise of reform came as a shock to those of us from Burma who thought the international community was on our side.
In 2006 I spoke on the main platform of the Conservative party conference about how, as a teenager, I was forced to flee my village when the Burmese army attacked us because we were from the Karen ethnic minority. At the same time as I fled, a British trade delegation was dining with the generals in Rangoon. The Conservative party said in future it would prioritise human rights in foreign policy, but last year history seemed to be repeating itself. After breaking a ceasefire with the ethnic Kachin in 2011, the Burmese army attacked civilian villages just as they had attacked mine. Women were raped and mutilated, farmers shot in their fields, and almost 100,000 forced to flee. It was all too familiar to my experience. These attacks have continued to this day, yet last December a British foreign office minister once again led a trade mission to Rangoon.
The truth is that there have been some welcome reforms in Burma. For those in many cities and central Burma, there has been an increase in some civil liberties. However, the process is top-down and skin-deep, with the president and army still not doing anything that limits their complete control over the country, or guarantees human rights.
As the people of Burma test the limits of the new freedoms they are supposed to be enjoying, the skin-deep nature of the reforms are becoming increasingly obvious. The international community praised the passing of a new law supposed to grant the right to protest, but in practice this law gives the government the right to ban any protest it doesn’t like, and once again peaceful protesters are ending up in jail. After promising a ceasefire in Kachin state, the Burmese army continued its attacks. Child soldiers are still being recruited despite a widely hailed agreement with the UN … the list of broken promises is a long one.
This creates embarrassing problems for the UK, EU and US, which have all talked about the courage of Burma’s president, former general Thein Sein. Having endorsed a process that is now clearly not what it seemed, their response seems to be to play down the problems and talk up the positives. This short-sightedness just encourages Thein Sein to believe he doesn’t need to make fundamental changes to make Burma democratic, and end human rights abuses. Sadly, more and more people in Burma are starting to worry Thein Sein might be correct in that belief.
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Zoya Phan, one of Burma’s leading democracy activists in Europe, is from the Karen ethnic group. When she was 14 Burmese army soldiers attacked her village, and she and her family were forced to flee. She is now a refugee living in London.
Go to Original – guardian.co.uk
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