Saving the Saffron Moment; The World’s Democracies against the Greed
May Ng
The UNSC emergency meetings, resolution, and the visits, by the UN envoys, Mr. Gambari and Paulo Sergio Pinheiro to Burma may be helping to improve the image of the UN and Myanmar junta; but it is not helping the Burmese people who are living under the threat of military violence daily. While the world waits, after the traumatic uprising in Burma, the United Nations organization still has not take an effective action against the Myanmar military for attacking and killing peaceful monks and demonstrators.

The recent UN resolution on Myanmar did not ask for actions beyond visits by UN representatives and it is still unclear what more Mr. Gambari and Mr. Pinheiro could do to ease the repression in Burma. Similar UN visits and Myanmar junta’s responses in the past nineteen years have not helped the people from the government’s aggression.

Last week, the military arrested the political activist, Su Su Nway, and the monk leader, Ashin U Gambira, while the UN representative Mr. Pinheiro was in Burma. And the army also arrested another monk, U Sanda Wara, and ransacked and robbed a number of monasteries in the same area.

Aung San Suu Kyi and many leaders from her NLD party are still under arrest and are subject to abuses by the government. The Myanmar junta is spreading vicious smear campaigns against the peaceful monks and Aung San Suu Kyi inside the country, while remaining engaged with the UN.

The Myanmar government continues to push for its seven step road map to democracy, which the student leader Min Ko Naing said will give members of the military an unfair advantage over the ordinary citizens for the control of political power. And without a free and fair political system to guarantee peace and prosperity it will continue the legacy of violence and bloodshed in Burma.

Michael Vatikiotis, a regional representative of the Henry Dunant Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, said that the recent announcement of a Constitutional Drafting Committee in Myanmar is more bad news for the international community’s determined effort to encourage a peaceful political transition in the country.

Detailed facts of the recent events in Burma have emerged as follow. On September 24, the Myanmar military began warning the monks not to break the government imposed rules. The monks were peacefully protesting the government’s brutality against the members of Burma’s Sangha in Pakokku.

Even though China has expressed hopes that Myanmar will push forward a democracy process appropriate for the country; on September 25 as the mass democracy protest was spreading quickly, China reassured the Myanmar regime that Beijing will not interfere in Burma’s internal affairs. Instead, China called on both sides, the army and the people, to exercise restraints, while the soldiers were equipped with guns from China, the barefoot monks were armed with only upside down bowls.

As the Myanmar government troops began attacking the peaceful monks and demonstrators on September 26, Russia told the UN that Myanmar does not pose a threat to the international peace and security, and that Russia will not support an UNSC action against Myanmar.

On September 27, the world watched as the Myanmar soldiers began shooting at the unarmed, peaceful, demonstrators and monks. The Japanese reporter Kenji Nagai was gunned down in full view and the Myanmar military later reasoned that Mr. Nagai was mistaken for a demonstrator.

On the same day, Russia and China vetoed the UNSC resolution designed to discourage further violence in Myanmar. As photos of bloody monasteries, sidewalks, injured people and monks, and dead bodies, began flooding the internet, the junta government shut down the entire internet connection.

In contrast to the inaction by Russia and China, the Visegrad Four of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia’s called on Burma on November 29, to release political prisoners and to provide information on the fate of the Buddhist monks and activists. And on September 30, Japan cut more than $4 million in aid to Burma.

The United States began imposing sanctions against the Myanmar military top leaders a few days before the crackdown began, and after the government arrested more protestors in October, President George Bush announced sweeping targeted sanctions against the military elites and business partners in Burma.

The European Union proposed targeted-reinforced sanctions on September 27, and approved new sanctions against the Myanmar military on October 15. On November 6, the EU appointed Piero Fassino as a Special EU Envoy for Burma, to work with the UN envoy Mr. Ibrahim Gambari.

Joining the protests by the EU, the US and others, Australia refused to accept a military official as a new Burmese ambassador, after the army attacked the Burmese protestors. And on October 24, Australia announced targeted sanctions against the Myanmar military generals and their associates in Burma.

On November 14, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier announced the so called “the toughest sanctions in the world” against Burma. Within days, France and its European Union partners followed, with step up economic sanctions against Myanmar in the wake of human rights violations by the ruling military junta.

As the United Nations, dominated by an increasingly bold alliance of repressive regimes, is failing to take action to protect the Burmese people from the ongoing military aggression, John McCain, a U.S. Senator from Arizona and a Republican presidential candidate, calls for a worldwide League of Democracies, which can act when the UN fails to relieve human suffering in places such as Burma.

In ‘Forging a World of Liberty under Law,’ G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter proposed a plan for creating a league of democracies. According to Ikenberry and Slaughter, the ‘Concert of Democracies’ can strengthen cooperation among the world’s liberal democracies when the existing regional and global institutions fail, by functioning as a focal point for efforts to strengthen liberty under law around the world.

A different organization from the proposed league of democracies, the International Steering Committee of the Community of Democracies (ISC) called on the government of Burma in September to stop all attacks and to respect the internationally recognized human and political rights of the Burmese citizens.

In November the French UN ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert suggested the UN envoy Mr. Gambari “to return to Myanmar soon and demanded the Myanmar authorities to cooperate with the UN.” Mr. Ripert is setting up a contact group to help Burma by bringing together the United States, the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, Japan and India; modeling on the six-party approach to the North Korean nuclear negotiations or the quartet for the Middle East.

On November 16, the British House of Lords launched the Burma Justice Committee to provide legal help; to petition to the United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Burmese political prisoners; and to use available legal steps to hold the military government accountable for its human rights abuses; with the aims of helping to restore the rule of law within Burma.

The recent killings in Burma have also prompted the Belgium prosecutors to reopen inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity by France’s Total over its pipeline project in Burma. And on November 9, the president of Tokyo APF News Inc. announced that he would urge the Japanese government to sue the Myanmar government through the International Criminal Court over the murder of video journalist Kenji Nagai.

A worker for Doctors without Borders who was in Sudan and Ethiopia recently, has visited a Shan internally displaced people’s camp inside Burma and found the dept of sufferings at this camp shocking. Forced displacement of ethnic minorities, forced labor, recruitment of child soldiers, rape as a state policy, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and custodial killings, and torture, by the Myanmar military are all well documented. If these records and evidence from recent murders of people and monks are used to charge the responsible authority in Burma with crimes against the humanity at the International Criminal Court, even if China and Russia could veto such a resolution, it can still save lives by discouraging further abuses by the military.

According to the latest news, China has blocked an UNSC presidential statement on Burma proposed by the majority of the council members. China has previously opposed the UN sanctions against Myanmar government as China believes that Myanmar is heading in the right direction after a harsh wave of arrests.

Back in September while the Burmese democracy protest was gathering momentum, India, the largest democracy in Asia, went to Burma and signed a $150 million deal for gas exploration. India also agreed to invest another $100 million in a transportation project with the junta.

These events came as no surprise, for Thomas Carother, an expert on democracy, said in ‘Confronting the Weakest Link’ that, even the established democracies in Asia are rife with personalism, money and patronage politics, and are often accused of being elitist, opportunistic, and corrupt.

Recently Thailand’s largest oil giant, PTT has announced that it will invest at least another US $1 billion over the next five years in developing an offshore gas project in Myanmar while the Thai government is again tightening the restrictions on refugees from Burma.

Singapore also has many commercial ties with the ruling junta of Burma, including an oil drilling business along with CNOOC of China. The Chinese government has been negotiating with Myanmar over the past few years on a natural gas pipeline from Myanmar’s western port of Sittwe to Kunming in China. And according to the Amnesty International, China, India, and Russia, are the principle suppliers of arms to Burma.

On September 23, as the mass demonstrations were taking place, the ASEAN Secretary General, Ong Keng Yong said he was not sure what the ASEAN could do to help end the political crisis in Burma. On October 29, Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo acknowledged that the ASEAN would not impose sanctions against Myanmar.

Whereas the ASEAN may call on Myanmar at the upcoming East Asian Summit (EAS) in Singapore to give a deadline to achieve democracy, the ASEAN chair Mr. Yeo said that a human rights body being considered at the ASEAN Charter will not have teeth but a tongue for moral influence.

According to a spoke person for China, while China, ASEAN, Japan, and South Korea are likely to discuss Myanmar at the EAS summit, it would not be a focus of discussions, as the agenda is likely to be taken up by regional cooperation, energy and environment.

In the analysis of the US-China-Asia relationship, Victor Cha, a Deputy Head of the US delegation to the six-party talks in 2007, said that even though the diplomacy with China over North Korea and Iran has been productive, the dialogue over human rights in Africa and Burma has been less successful. He believes that the attention paid to the Beijing Olympics and the continuing U.S. commitment to Burma can encourage changes.

The concerted efforts by many democratic countries and organizations are essential for saving Burma, since it is becoming clear that the ASEAN and the UN are failing to protect the vulnerable people in Burma. The emergence of the league of worldwide democracies has only begun, but such a possibility is already bringing hope to Burma where it used to have none.

The world should no longer have an illusion that the violent and brutal Myanmar military will be gently nudged into letting the Burmese people lives in peace and security. The democratic alliances of the world need to continue putting pressure on the Myanmar regime until the leaders of the opposition can freely express their wishes to the world and the Burmese people can proceed with their democratic national reconciliation.

The saffron monks have appeared like a flash of lightening in the darkest hour of humanity, in Burma. Their courage, their dignity and their faith in the future of mankind during the most desperate moment has been their gift of hope to the world.

The Saffron Moment will endure only if the free people in democratic countries can join up forces to turn back the powerful tide of greed inside Burma.

May Ng is from Burma and a member of Justice for Human Rights in Burma