Groups all over the world, including in Dublin, took advantage of the 65th birthday of Aung Jang Suu Kyi to pressurise her jailers in her native Burma to release her, and hold genuinely democratic elections later this year.
But even as Christy Moore’s songs of defiance and freedom rang out through the National Concert Hall, it begged the question about the limitations of civil protest.
The writer Damian Gorman read part of his poem addressed to the Troubles in the North but applicable to Burma warning of the dangers of complacency and detachment.
The British prime minister, the US President, leaders from a lot of the free world issued statements demanding the release of the woman who has been under house arrest for 15 of the past 21 years since she won the last general election held in Burma.
But none of the pleas and none of the bans on imports or embargoes on trade and investment appear to have affected the military dictatorship. Rated the most corrupt country in the world using child soldiers, sex slaves for its army, forced labour and a major exporter of heroine, it survives because it has supporters.
These include Russia and it’s neighbouring countries China and India that have forced UN condemnations to be watered down. They pursue their trade interests as Russia helps with their nuclear reactor, China supplies arms and there are claims that North Korea is helping to develop nuclear weapons.
A gasfield is due to come on stream in two years time doubtless will make the country even more attractive.
In the meantime the ruling military dictators spend less than any other country in the world on the health of it’s 56 million citizens, maintain the 12th largest active army in the world and has built a new capital city with eight lane highways and flyovers - and no traffic.
Burma is part of ASEAN, the association of 10 South East Asian nations, and while under developed compared to the EU, it is becoming an increasingly important body, especially as it represents many of the fastest growing economies in the world.
There were disputes in the past between the two organisations over Burma and at their joint meeting last year ASEAN members were not interested in discussing the show trial of Aung San Suu Kyi after an American swam across a lake to her prison-home and stayed two days before swimming back again. EU delegates spoke their minds on the corruption of the country and on the illegality of Suu Kyi’s detention. But the Cambodian Prime Minister, like his colleagues refused to engage saying, “We should not lose sight of the broader and longer-term interests of the two regions”.
They argue they don’t want the Burmese generals moving away from ASEAN to side instead with China for instance and so further increasing its influence in the region.
The EU appreciates this argument especially as the pressure from the western world over the past two decades has failed to change the dictatorship and perhaps ASEAN, if left to its own devices, might have more success.
However the EU is in danger of losing credibility not just on Burma but on support for human rights following it’s joint statement with ASEAN calling for the elections in October to be free and fair. It ignored that most politicians, like Suu Kyi are either in jail or have been banned by the new constitution from taking part and that the new rules are designed to keep the dictatorship in power.
Instead it called on the military to “continue to engage in meaningful manner with the international community, including ASEAN and the UN”, despite the fact that they have never engaged.
Perhaps stating the facts, no matter how ineffectual, is better than detachment masquerading as diplomacy, especially when some ASEAN members despite signing up to the UN charter of human rights believe such rights are a private matter and that others mentioning it is “meddling” in another country’s business.
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Jun 21, 2010Posted By
Derek TonkinThere is no meeting of minds between ASEAN and the EU over Burma because the former strongly oppose sanctions which they say hit the wrong people and are counterproducti ve, while the EU ratchet them up all the time to assuage popular outrage, but to absolutely no effect because the EU's economic interface with Burma is so marginal.
Her name, by the way, is Aung San Suu Kyi (Kyi, not Khi) and she was debarred from standing in the 1990 elections, which even she acknowledged were not to a governing parliament - see her interview with Asia Week in July 1989 included in her "Freedom from Fear", 10 months before the May 1990 elections.
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