Time for Asean to act on Burma

[hlaing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

July 7, 1998 

Editorial from bangkok post

Time for Asean to act on Burma 

Asean will be unhappy if tension between Burma's dictators and its legally
elected democratic government escalates into violence, says Domingo Siazon,
the foreign minister of the hilippines. The region, he points out, is going
through a spot of bother and the last thing it needs is political
instability, which, like economic turmoil, has a knack of spreading. 

If Asean were to have a word with itself about its performance with Burma,
it may find embarrassment, even shame, a more appropriate emotion than
unhappiness. It was Asean that afforded an illegitimate regime a
respectability it does not deserve in a strategy that did not work. If
violence erupts in Burma, the people of that impoverished nation will find
a good deal more to be unhappy about. 

Mr Siazon is correct to appeal for restraint as the self-styled State Peace
and Development Council mutters darkly about the National League for
Democracy, which will not go away no matter how badly it is treated. 

It is odd that the council, with its total control over state apparatus,
not to mention guns, should be so rattled about the league, which has
nothing more threatening than the support of 85 percent of the population.
But there again, the bully is motivated by insecurities, among them fear.
In its latest manifestation of paranoia, the dictatorship has warned that
it and the league are on a collision course, which is alarming when it is
considered which side is in the driving seat of the state juggernaut. The
warning comes as the junta hints that it just may cease to impede the
education of the young so long as the league refrains from reminding it who
won the 1990 election. It is more than a year since Asean admitted the
junta to its little club and little, if anything, has been done to induce
it to behave itself. The approach has been one of all carrot and no stick,
which has been taken by the junta to mean it can carry on in the way it
knows best. By allowing this to happen, the supporters of Burma's admission
have overlooked the founding principles of Asean - to accelerate economic
growth, social progress and cultural development. 

Burma may have been more attentive to its critics in Asean when everyone
was rolling in money and a reward was in sight, but its admission coincided
unhappily with our own well-documented economic travails. All that has
happened is that we have a new member which will not change its ways and is
viewed in the international community as something of a diplomatic skunk. 

Since the junta's admission, much has changed, not least in the economies
of its new friends. Gone are the backers of large-scale investment projects
who proclaimed development would nurture democracy, gone is the generosity
of regional countries that have to tend to problems closer to home.
Regional partners, such as Indonesia, are taking steps, albeit faltering,
towards political reform, and its military is being restrained; the
Philippines has pulled off a fair election; we have our new constitution.
Even in time of economic trouble, progress is being made, but not in Burma,
which is no stranger to the bankruptcy brought upon the country by the
people that Asean has chosen to embrace. 

The more forward-thinking members of Asean, not least Thailand, are anxious
now to engage Burma in a way that does not give the junta carte blanche to
engage in further thuggery and oppression. The realisation is a little late
but it is welcome, and it is significant that the movement originates in a
country which borders Burma and is familiar with the ways of its rulers