Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (21 page)

Under Japanese law, Burma had to be re-recognized following the coup of 1988. Japanese conglomerates, which were losing money with the stoppage of the Japanese aid program and the cessation of economic assistance, petitioned the embassy in Rangoon to restart the program. In addition, to avoid the embarrassment of having the Burmese sit next to the Palestine Liberation Organization at Emperor Hirohito’s funeral as an “unrecognized state,” Japan re-recognized Burma on February 17, 1989.

Under the SLORC/SPDC, Japan’s assistance has annually averaged some US$86.6 million from 1988 to 1995, and US$36.7 million 1996 to 2005. Such assistance has not been for loans but for humanitarian assistance and debt relief. Japan’s definition of humanitarian assistance, however, is quite different from what in the United States was once called “basic human needs” (health, education, nutrition, agriculture). It has expanded to include infrastructure, such as recent repairs to the Rangoon airport and the Baluchaung hydroelectric project (a stellar example of a successful Japanese aid project from the 1950s).

Still, Japanese influence in Myanmar has waned; access is lacking, and the esteem in which the Burmese held Japan has diminished. Two factors are probably responsible. The first is that Japan’s personal relationship with Ne Win disappeared. The second is that the United States has pressured Japan to stop aid as part of their sanctions approach to Myanmar. The result was the provision of humanitarian assistance only. In addition, in 1992 Japan also signed on to the official development assistance charter, which advocated increased emphasis on human rights and democracy. Some Japanese blame their government for the loss of influence in Myanmar, a loss that has serious strategic implications. This criticism, however, fails to consider the personalized nature of the Japan–Burma attachment through Ne Win.

Japan’s strategists see the increasing influence of China in Myanmar as inimical to their security interests because of China’s direct access to gas and oil through Myanmar. As the Burmese move toward their 2010 elections, Japan will be under increasing internal strategic and economic pressure to recognize that some political progress has taken place and that Japanese assistance should increase.

This author once wrote that the BSPP killed civil society and prevented the functioning of any significant advocacy groups outside of its purview. In a somewhat ironic change, the SLORC/SPDC in 1988 (in the Law Relating to Forming Organizations) allowed the mushrooming of many types of indigenous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), although not advocacy groups they could not control or were deemed a potential threat. There are estimated in the country to be some 214,000 community-based organizations, such as those that service a local need such as parent-teachers’ associations, day care centers, and so on. A wide variety of religious-based organizations (almost half of such groups) of all the major faiths have been established, even if they are not exactly flourishing. In addition, some 270 apolitical indigenous NGOs operate at a various levels, providing services the government does not want to give, ignores, or is incompetent to provide. As long as they are not seen as threatening the power base or engaging in efforts that undercut the state, they seem to function. Their effectiveness in any geographic region depends on their relationship with the local military command. In some areas, these local NGOs are the link that provides cultural continuity between past ethnic, linguistic, and cultural norms and needs, such as language instruction, that have effectively been undercut by the state in their Burmanization (“Myanmaification”) process.

Somewhat under fifty international NGOs also provided services before Cyclone Nargis, but since January 2006, they had been under more stringent and controlling operational requirements (travel, government liaison, banking, etc.) and government surveillance. The strictness with which these regulations are enforced varies by locale and organization. After Nargis, however, regulations were relaxed, and they expanded their roles and increased their local staffs, providing needed relief in stricken areas.

Civil society organizations, those nonprofit groups variously distanced from government and providing space between it and the family, might be the basis for a degree of pluralism in a unitary state. Thus, insofar as they have local influence, they mitigate centralized control and could form the basis for more representative authority and eventually more democratic governance.

The military government, having seen the ineffectual nature of the BSPP, has essentially replaced it with overarching GONGOs (government-owned or -operated nongovernmental organizations), the most important of which is the USDA. This is a mass organization, comprising 24.6 million members—about half the total population, and because many children are too young to join, perhaps two-thirds of the total adult population. It explicitly was designed to service military needs; its patron is the senior general. It carries out business, engages in paramilitary activities, and sponsors educational programs ranging from Buddhism to computers. It has been used for government-sponsored rallies and occasional violence against demonstrators or the opposition. It often operates from government buildings and gets government contracts to earn income (e.g., bus routes). There are considerable social and economic pressures to join, and some economic advantages to doing so. It is not explicitly a political party, because civil servants and military cannot join political parties, but it effectively functions as one like the BSPP. It is the most important mass organization in the country. Other government groups include the Myanmar
Maternal and Child Welfare Organization, chaired by the wives of the leadership, fire fighters, veterans, and members of other organizations that mobilize hundreds of thousands of citizens toward professional and state-sponsored goals.

In its early incarnation, the USDA seems to have been modeled after GOLKAR, the Indonesian “functional groups” organization that supported President Suharto. That changed from a civil organization into a political party. The USDA may go a different route after the failure of the BSPP and form separate but effectively affiliated parties that would do the government’s bidding in the 2010 elections. Rumors exist of the USDA being behind the formation of two or three such parties (variously named the National Prosperity Party and a National Security and Development Party) and that they hope to garner some 26 percent of the seats, which—along with the active-duty military holding an additional 25 percent—would give the military a clear majority. Whatever its future function, it has been a mass mobilization organization to service the state’s perceived needs and will continue to be significant in the campaign period.

However one may wish to define human rights—political, economic, social, or cultural—Myanmar authorities have deprived their citizenry of any of these fundamental rights. Since the coup of 1988, Myanmar has been ruled essentially by martial law. There is no independent judiciary, and “policy,” which in the Burmese context means the proclivities of the regime at any point, supercedes whatever vestiges of law that may exist. The rules regulating any public activity are stringent. The regime has denied to all its peoples political representation and has censored all media. It has not provided an effective educational system. It has vastly underfunded health services, making it the second worst in the world after Sierra Leone. It has strongly limited the expression of minority cultures. Access
to the market, except for petty trading in the bazaars, is subject to discriminatory practices. Public gatherings of more than five people are illegal without state-authorized permits.

Trials are usually secret, sentences perversely long (and extendable at the state’s command), and prison conditions deplorable. Torture is widespread and arbitrary. There have been, however, few judicially authorized executions in contrast to many authoritarian states. Although the government denies that there are any political prisoners, external observers estimate there are over 2,100. The government claims they are incarcerated for other activities. Surveillance of suspect civilians is widespread and extends to their families, who are often harassed. Sometimes, to score an international point, some prisoners are released, but others are rejailed. One foreign diplomat described the process as the releasing little caged birds at Buddhist temples to gain merit, only to have them recaptured and recaged for further use. It is evident that in 2008–2009, potential leaders who might disrupt the 2010 elections were being held to prevent state-defined “chaos” from occurring.

The rights situation is worse in areas bordering fighting. People are often conscripted to be porters for the military, and “free fire zones” are created—anyone found in that area is suspect. Many villages have been burned. There are said to be a many child soldiers in the Myanmar army, although the number of them is in question. In proportional terms, however, the percentage is probably higher among some minority troops, who have been in rebellion for a generation or two.

Reputable international organizations, including the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Labor Organization, as well as official organs such as the U.S. State Department, have issued reports on the sorry state of human rights.

The junta has claimed, however (and will continue to claim), that Myanmar is on the road to democracy. Although the newly approved constitution of 2008 affirms a variety of rights, they
are always subject to laws or issues that the junta stresses, such as national unity, morality, order, and other state policy directives.

General Khin Nyunt was removed from office in October 2004. He was a pivotal figure in the junta since 1988. One of three members who were present at the creation of the junta and who remained in power until 2004 (Than Shwe, Maung Aye, and Khin Nyunt—Saw Maung has died), General Khin Nyunt was said to be a protégé of Ne Win. He never commanded troops in the field, in contrast to most of his peers, but he had been in charge of military intelligence, which gave him access to not only what was going on throughout the society but also the high command’s public and private affairs. He was secretary-1 under the SLORC and SPDC, the third highest position in the state. He was also in charge of international affairs and thus had more contact with the outside world, in contrast to Generals Saw Maung (until 1992), Than Shwe, and Maung Aye. Khin Nyunt was reportedly close to China. Although the division of the junta into hard-liners and soft-liners may be somewhat misleading, it was evident that he was more concerned with what the outside world thought and was more interested in joining ASEAN than his colleagues were. It was he who negotiated the cease-fires with the ethnic rebellions and was responsible for the external contact between the United Nations and Aung San Suu Kyi (even if he did not initiate it). It is unclear how much of this was his idea, but on his arrest the junta was careful to state that the work he was carrying out was SPDC policy, not that of any individual. Yet his failure to improve relations with the United States may have contributed to his downfall.

In August 2003 he became prime minister and was in charge of the “roadmap toward discipline-flourishing democracy.”
This staged set of efforts involved completing the drafting of the new constitution, a referendum on that constitution, new general elections in 2010, and the installation of a new government thereafter.

Khin Nyunt’s arrest supposedly came about because of corruption in the military intelligence unit along the China border at Muse. Whatever may have occurred—and it is widely believed that corruption flourishes along that border because of the lucrative smuggling trade—it is said that he had too much information on too many high-ranking people in the military. When he became prime minister, he was asked to resign from military intelligence, but he refused to do so. Because he never commanded troops, he had no mass military loyalty base, as such loyalty is personal rather than institutional. As long as Ne Win had his faculties, it seems unlikely that any of Khin Nyunt’s adversaries or competitors could touch him. At the same time, since he did not command troops, he was incapable of launching a countercoup. His 2002 efforts to assuage the United States on narcotics issues failed through U.S. recalcitrance to deal with him following the Republican victory in the November 2002 U.S. elections, which may have undercut his credibility further with the senior general.

Because power is personalized, leading to entourages, when one person at the apex of any organization is purged, that person’s entourage has to go as well. This led to mass arrests of military security personnel and decimated that institution. When Ne Win arrested General Tin Oo’s (head, military intelligence) in 1983, it eliminated the capacity of the government to prevent the intended assassination by North Korean agents of visiting South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan; Khin Nyunt’s arrest and the depopulation of military intelligence may have led to lethal and unprecedented bombings in Rangoon and Mandalay in 2005 that killed a number of people. Khin Nyunt was tried in secret, found guilty, and sentenced to forty-four years in jail, but is instead under house arrest.

The impact of the fall of Khin Nyunt goes far beyond the demise of military intelligence (its functions related to the civilian population had been taken over by the Special Branch of the police), but the Office of the Chief of Military Intelligence is now gradually taking back some civilian responsibilities. A window to the outside world has been shut, for the foreign ministry staff has no real policy power. Khin Nyunt seemed more pragmatic and more immune to exaggerations of power than some of his associates. If foreigners could not directly influence him, he listened to them and sometimes had real exchanges of opinion with him. Since his arrest, foreign contacts with the military junta and civilian hierarchy have been far more limited.