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No.99-9                                          Analytica Birmanie
THE KOSOVO PROBLEM AND PARALLELS TO THE POLITICS OF REPRESSION IN BURMA

There are many parallels between the Kosovo problem in Yugoslavia and
the politics of repression in Burma. In both countries, a group of men in
power have embarked on a wildly irresponsible policy of repression
against ordinary people. This includes genocidal and ethnic-cleansing
actions against people of a different culture, language, and identity. 
Both countries were at one time organized around the principles of unity 
in diversity and ethnic equality, which worked after a fashion in Burma 
till the military usurpation of power in 1962.

The difference between the two situations is that Yugoslavia lies in
Europe, while Burma is in Southeast Asia. As such, the international
community has paid more attention to the former -- intervening when the
"old" Yugoslav communist order fell apart after the death of Tito and the 
disintegration of the Marxist bloc in Europe. 

Even then, it took years of suffering on the part of the Bosnian Muslim 
population for the internation community, and the NATO powers in 
particular, to stop the bloodshed and ethnic cleansing that had been 
perpetrated by the Milosevic regime, at present engaged in cleansing 
Kosovo of ethnic Albanians.

Analytically, it can be said on balance that the international community,
UN especially, has been inattentive to the suffering of ordinary folks in 
the Balkan. This is also true for Burma. 

In the case of Burma, the UN has passed resolutions after toothless 
resolutions calling on the brutal military regime to accommodate the 
aspirations of the people for democracy, human rights, and ethnic 
equality and justice. Human rights violations in Burma -- rapes, 
extrajudicial killings, forced labor, plunder and pillage especially of 
rural people in the ethnic areas -- have also been endlessly document by 
UN agencies and officials, but with nothing done to assuage the plight of 
the victims. For example, the 100,000 or more Shans forced to flee to 
Thailand are not even acknowledged as victims of ethnic cleansing actions 
by Rangoon junta. They are branded as illegal immigrants and forced to 
fend for themselves as best as they can in what is to them a strange 
land. 

Being attentive to the plight of victims -- the ordinary folks -- in
Burma, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo or elsewhere, does not necessarily imply 
that the international community, more specifically the UN, NATO, the
United States, and others, will be called to intervene everywhere -- as 
NATO and the U.S. is now doing in Kosovo.

Attention to the plight of ordinary people in problem countries and areas 
of the world, would compell the international community -- governments 
and international bodies -- to be guided in their approach to these 
situations by a set of firm principles, rather than by political 
expediency. Questions such as the following are fundamental to such 
principled approach: are powerholders within a problem country 
legitimate, are they serving the people, do they observe their own laws 
and constitutions, or are they behaving like criminals -- murdering, 
raping, looting, plundering, and are they engaged in genocidal and ethnic 
cleansing actions against groups with different culture, identity, 
language, and religion?

These are the questions that should be focused on, well before dropping 
bombs and launching air strikes. In the present Kosovo crisis, the plight 
of victims of domestic oppression and repression has not been adequately 
focused on, and scant effort made to help them prior to the air strikes. 
An unfortunate result of this is that charges of genocide and ethnic 
cleansing levelled against the Milosevic regime appear to many as nothing 
more than hollow and cynical justifications for the dropping of NATO and 
American bombs and missles on Yugoslavia.

The fact that international intervention in Kosovo is spearheaded by a
military organization -- NATO -- rather than the UN or the European
Union, points out clearly to the lack of moral sense and moral courage on 
the part of the international community, and worse, a clear lack of 
principles.

A different way forward must be found to ensure peace and stability 
around the world. It must be based on firm and principled stand against 
lawless despots and brutal powerholders who wage war against their own 
people and deny them their rights as human beings. The international 
community must come to grips with the fact that a very, very large 
portion of human suffering and misery, impoverishment, danger to life, 
limb and property of ordinary folks are rooted in despotic and/or 
illegal, illegitimate rule and rulers. 

Despots who rule at gunpoint, or give sanction to rapes, murder, plunder, 
and genocidal actions should be given notice that they stand outside the 
pale of civilization, and treated accordingly. These regimes should not
be given the privileges, courtesies, and other facilities accorded to
bonafide governments.

It should be made very clear by the international community that regimes
that kill their own people, plunder the natural resources of the country,
impoverish and bring misery and suffering to ordinary folks are not
governments, not in the legal sense of the word. Then, and only then, 
will the rule of law and respect for human life and dignity established 
that will make redundant military actions -- air strikes -- that in the 
long run hurt ordinary people more than it does despots like Milosevic, 
and others like him who rule in Burma and elsewhere.


ANALYTICA BIRMANIE
April 7, 1999.
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