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NEWS - New Burma Policy Needed Afte (r)



A Recommendation to Change Burma

As a Burmese activist w who has ten year experience in a mobilization of
reiteration democracy in Burma, I would like to conclude that the
recommendations by Human Rights Watch to conduct Burma's new policy for ten
years ahead are seemed to be only 2% creditable. The fact is that Burmese
people have already shown since 1988 what kind of government they want. It is
the will of the people. So is the desire that will never be defeated by either
an organization or person.

Only pressure and further isolation will help promoting democracy in Burma
within months. Investing money with the regime will help the regime to repress
its own people and the democratic forces. Sending a U.S. ambassador to Burma
under this brutal regime will only show to recognize the junta as a legitimate
government by the U.S.. 

To under the Burmese army, one should understand the nature of the present
ruling general-thugs first. The army that some overly counted does not welcome
the generals. In fact, officers and solders know very clearly how these thugs
have cheated them. If there is a chance to turn down the thugs, the officers
along with the soldiers will overthrew the thugs, and more than that they will
join hands with the people and democratic forces. 

To install a peaceful transition in Burma, U.S, EU, Australia, Canada, Japan,
and ASEAN should form " a contact group" during September UN General Assembly.
Governments and Burma's sympathizers should fund the contact group. Thus the
internationally recognized contact is able to carry the U.S. resolution, of
which it says are to honor 1990 election results, and to hold dialogue with
the democratic forces and ethnic forces. At the same time, economic sanctions,
diplomatic sanction, and arm embargo must put on Burma until the certain
points are met. In the end, Burma will be changed and become one of the
democratic countries in our world via international pressure and intervention.

One very important thing to remember for every one is that the junta does not
have enough dollars to run the county not more than three months. Rice, main
daily foods for every Burmese, is insufficient. Political tension is in heat.
Disagreement between the military functions and the military intelligence
functions are boiling. For these reasons, only putting more pressure and
isolation is highly recommended. 


The Rangoon Post Working Group (Washington, DC)

(301) 984-6171
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Human Rights Watch File is attatched...

In a message dated 98-08-07 18:59:10 EDT, you write:

<< 
 New Burma Policy Needed After Decade of No Results - HRW
 
 (August 6, 1998) -- Ten years after a Burma became a pariah state by
 crushing a pro-democracy uprising, engagement and isolation
 strategies to promote human rights have both failed, Human Rights Watch
 said today. A decade after the August 8, 1988 crackdown, the
 military still has a stranglehold on power, human rights abuses are
 rampant, and the economy is in a tailspin. Human Rights Watch is calling
 for
 a new, multilateral policy that would include the following elements: 
 
     recognition that the three key actors that will determine Burma's
 future are the army (Tatmadaw); the democratic
     opposition led by Aung San Suu Kyi; and the ethnic minority
 organizations, some of which are armed, along
     Burma's borders with Thailand, China, India, and Bangladesh. A new
 policy would have to involve communication
     with all three. Communication with the army, however, should not be
 seen as in any way legitimating its role. 
 
     recognition that coordination and establishment of common ground is
 necessary among Western donors, Japan,
     the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and China.
 President Clinton and EU leaders in particular
     could make good use of improved relations with China to actively
 engage China in finding a solution to the Burma
     impasse. 
 
     development of a road map by which specific steps toward verifiable
 human rights improvements on all fronts would gradually lead to
     incremental restoration of normal economic and diplomatic relations
 with the international community. 
 
 It is not difficult to show the failure of current policies. There are
 today an estimated 1,300 political prisoners in Burma's jails; over 1
 million
 internally displaced persons, mainly in ethnic minority areas; some
 200,000 refugees in neighboring countries, including Thailand,
 Bangladesh,
 India, and China; and at least 800,000 illegal migrant workers in
 Thailand alone, with several thousand more in Japan, Malaysia,
 Indonesia, and
 Singapore. The public health and education sectors have all but
 collapsed, with the average per capita spending on health in 1996 a mere
 $0.50 per annum, while universities, closed for over three years from
 June 1988 to May 1991, then again from December 1991 to May 1992,
 were closed again after student demonstrations in December 1996 and have
 still not reopened. 
 
 The main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, has been
 decimated by arrests and intimidation. A series of draconian
 regulations and laws has made it legally impossible for any form of
 civil society to emerge. The use of forced labor, one of the most widely
 condemned practices of the Burmese government, has not abated but
 appears to have increased with the collapse of the economy and of
 neighboring Asian economies that drew Burmese migrant workers abroad.
 Like forced labor, a program of forced relocation of ethnic minority
 villages for purposes of "internal security" has helped fuel the exodus
 of refugees to Thailand and Bangladesh. State promotion of Buddhism
 has played on existing communal tensions between ethnic Burmans, who are
 largely Buddhists, and minorities, who are mostly either Muslim or
 Christian. 
 
 The only real achievement of the government known until November 1997 as
 the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) and since
 then as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has been the
 conclusion of cease-fire agreements with various ethnic insurgencies
 along Burma's borders. These agreements, which have lowered the level of
 actual fighting, have yet to develop into lasting political solutions,
 however, and they have come at an enormous price. In Shan State
 especially, they have been followed by an explosion of heroin
 production, as
 the government appears to have offered to turn a blind eye to the
 rebels' narcotics trade in exchange for a cease-fire. In other areas,
 the
 agreements have been preceded by major military offensives that have
 caused untold suffering to the civilian population and resulted in
 massive refugee outflows. 
 
 These developments have benefited no one, neither ASEAN with its
 policies of engagement nor Europe and the U.S. with their policies of
 sanctions. China may have benefited the most by taking advantage of the
 situation to become Burma's major arms supplier and one of its
 largest trading partners, but even China has been hurt by the drug and
 HIV explosion along its southern border and Burma's growing economic
 problems. 
 
 Ten years on, it is therefore time for a major reassessment of policy
 towards Burma. A new policy must include: 
 
     efforts to understand the nature of the three key actors in Burmese
 politics. The West knows and admires Aung San Suu Kyi; unlike
     Japan or the ASEAN countries, it knows little about the nature and
 ideology of the Burmese armed forces, the various actors in the
     military leadership, and the tensions within this consensus-driven
 government. The armed ethnic minority groups who between them
     command over 65,000 troops and control some of the most potentially
 profitable land in the country _ as well as some of them being
     producers of most of the world's heroin supply _ are even less well
 known and understood. 
 
     increased communication with all three actors. The U.S., for
 example, should now consider sending an ambassador to Rangoon, and
     ASEAN diplomats should continue their efforts to engage both the
 military and the democratic opposition. 
 
     a real effort at multilateralism. Since 1990, the key multilateral
 initiative has involved the passing of consensus resolutions at the U.N.
     Commission on Human Rights condemning human rights abuses in Burma
 and calling on the military to change its ways; since 1991 the
     U.N. General Assembly has also passed similar resolutions. Each year
 the resolutions get tougher, and each year Burmese leaders
     denounce them as "interference" in Burma's internal affairs and
 refuse to implement them. These resolutions would be far more useful if
     they were understood by all as not being merely an annual exercise
 in condemnation but as the basis for establishing the benchmarks for
     Burma's acceptance back into the international fold. The upcoming
 meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September
     might be a good opportunity for the key parties interested in Burma,
 including China, to come together to discuss a coordinated strategy. 
 
 Finally, a road map needs to be laid out that would specify clearly how
 concrete steps toward the ending of forced labor, release of political
 prisoners, restoration of basic civil rights, and international access
 to border areas, among other measures, could lead progressively to a
 lifting
 of sanctions currently in place and a resumption of normal political and
 economic ties between Burma and the major industrialized countries. 
 
 Without a new policy, the next ten years in Burma may be no different
 than the last. 
 
 For more information contact:
 Sidney Jones (New York) +1 212 216-1228 
 Mike Jendrzejczyk (Washington) +1 202 371-6592, x113 
 Jean-Paul Marthoz (Brussels) +3 22 732-2009
 
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