Burma on the Brink

While these alternative agendas were ignored, the talks nonetheless continued until July 9. Then, everyone went home. The National Convention, declared the government, was a success. “They told us to meet again in the dry season,” Sao Khai Hpa, chairman of the Shan State Army, told The Irrawaddy, an English-language publication put out by Burmese exiles in Thailand. But the generals will not be hurried, and some theorize they will not have to introduce reforms until 2006, when Burma assumes the presidency of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (asean). Meanwhile, according to Amnesty International, 1,350 political detainees remain in jail.

The real credibility issue overhanging the National Convention concerns Suu Kyi. Media-wise and charismatic, the Nobel laureate is the political equivalent in Burma of the Dalai Lama. She has been uncompromising, perhaps unrealistically so, in her demands that the usurping generals return the country to its people. Beyond Burma’s borders, she is a heroine, the international symbol for her country’s suffering, and her house arrest the main justification for the sanctions. But within Burma, there are murmurs of dissatisfaction over Suu Kyi’s all-or-nothing stand. Meanwhile, a report by the International Crisis Group explicitly disagrees with hardline factions in Burma and calls for a balance between “what is desirable and what is achievable.”

Between 1993 and 1996, the US imposed over sixty sets of unilateral sanctions against thirty-five nations, even though sanctions are now widely thought to be a “blunt instrument” that hurt the oppressed instead of punishing the oppressors. A 1999 report titled “Feeling Good Or Doing Good With Sanctions” by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, looked at five sanctioned countries, including Burma, and noted that such measures allow dictatorial administrations “to blame internal economic problems on the sanctions and to appeal to anti-American nationalism.” What would be far more effective, said the report, would be “proactive, flexible engagement.”

Though Canada is far from adopting such a policy, Bill Graham, as foreign affairs minister in 2003, conceded that the use of strict sanctions “hits the poorest people in the country who produce these products. It’s not going to hit the leaders.” While Ottawa has not imposed unilateral sanctions on Burma, it has taken restrictive measures. “Canadian policy does not encourage trade with, or investment in, Burma, nor do we engage in Ministerial-level visits to Burma,” reads the Department of Foreign Affairs Web page on Burma. “This is in keeping with the stated wishes of Burma’s democracy leader and Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.” Consistent with government policy, Canadian companies, such as the Bank of Nova Scotia, Petro-Canada, and Seagrams, turned away from investment opportunities in Burma during the 1990s.

The US has not appointed an ambassador to Burma since 1990. Washington banned all investment in the country in 1997, and last year barred imports of anything mined, made, grown, or assembled there. It also froze any US-based assets belonging to Burma or its leaders and opposed any loan assistance from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

The list of chastizing governments and organizations is a long one. The European Union has been stepping up measures to discourage trade with Burma since 1996. In June 2000, the International Labor Organization censured Burma over its use of forced labour. In June 2003, Japan stopped all aid to Burma after years as its biggest donor. And a month later even Malaysia, which has never ceased trading with Burma, suggested that asean expel Burma over the slow pace of its democratic reforms and its human rights violations.

At a grassroots level, activist pressure has succeeded in limiting commercial trade with Burma. For example, two years ago Amnesty International targeted stores in Switzerland, France, and Holland that carried shirts and lingerie made at a factory in Rangoon. Suppliers subsequently moved production to Cambodia, China, and Madagascar—putting three thousand workers, mainly female, out of work.

Companies such as Anheuser-Busch,Pepsi-Cola, Best Western, Carlsberg, Compaq, Levi Strauss & Co., J.Crew, Motorola, and Philips, among many others, all pulled out during the 1990s, in response to boycotts, government restrictions, or a combination of both.

So how does this marooned nation operate? Well, there’s the drug money and then there is China. With scant criticism from Western powers reluctant to offend the emerging economic giant, China has invested heavily, beginning with a $250-million (US) loan in 1998 for a 280-megawatt power plant near Pyinmana. Its commercial trade with Burma in 1999 jumped 124 percent and has increased significantly since. There have been billion-dollar military deliveries from China, the first shipment of which arrived in 1991, and included eleven F-7 jets. (The defeat of rebels from various regional ethnic groups is largely due to this Chinese arsenal.) Other countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and India have also been busily trading with the sanctioned nation.

Relying on cracks in the sanctions wall, however, is a short-term solution at best. No doubt, the absence of freedom and the passivity borne of low expectations can subdue, even tranquillize, a population. But with power running uncertainly and the economy stagnant,Burma could descend into chaos. Hope resides in the National Convention and, perhaps, in countries such as Canada reviewing their “principled” stance vis-à-vis this, one of Asia’s most abject peoples.