Myanmar’s military junta, one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, must be pleased with its weekend’s work at the 39-nation Asia-Europe (Asem) meeting in Hanoi.
Far from condemning the generals’ continuing, egregious abuses of human rights, Asem expressed a vague hope that the regime’s spurious ”national reconciliation process” would succeed and ”looked forward to the early lifting of restrictions on political parties”.
A threatened European Union boycott of the meeting, attended for the first time by the junta’s representatives, failed to materialise. So, too, did any mention in the final communique of the plight of Myanmar’s detained pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and her persecuted National League for Democracy (NLD).
Instead, the same junta that overturned the NLD’s 1990 election victory and which the International Labour Organisation has accused of ”crimes against humanity” was formally inducted into Asem.
Much of the blame for this outcome may be laid at the door of leading Asian countries, particularly China, which maintain normal political and trade relations with Myanmar.
Japan’s prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said Asem membership would ”encourage Myanmar [the junta’s name for Burma] in a positive direction”.
Smaller Asian countries such as Vietnam seem increasingly wary, after Afghanistan and Iraq, of any perceived attempt to foist western values upon them.
This sentiment has been exploited by Rangoon’s state-run media. ”Democracy cannot be built by outside pressure … democracy cannot prevail by foreign invasion, either,” an official commentary said at the weekend.
The EU, in theory, has what it calls a ”common position” on Myanmar. It says the present situation is ”unacceptable”. But differences on how best to proceed, influenced by commercial considerations and disagreements on tactics, also undermine effective action.
France’s president, Jacques Chirac, said in Hanoi he hoped additional EU sanctions would not be necessary because they ”will hurt the poorest people”.
But France fears its investments in Myanmar, including those of Total Oil, may also be hurt.
Measures announced by EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday appear significantly weaker as a result of French lobbying.
According to the British Foreign Office, the curbs on new foreign investment in state-owned businesses, and on visas, amount to an important tightening of existing sanctions aimed at the regime, and not at the Burmese people.
But John Jackson, director of the Burma Campaign UK, said the EU’s measures were ”full of loopholes” and fell woefully short of the broader, targeted investment sanctions which were necessary.
Decrying international inaction, Archbishop Desmond Tutu issued a plea last week on behalf of Suu Kyi, a fellow Nobel peace laureate, whose latest period of house arrest has lasted since May, 2003.
”The words of protest at her detention from world leaders ring hollow when they do not translate into action,” he wrote in the International Herald Tribune.
”Suu Kyi and the people of Myanmar have not called for a military coalition to invade their country. They have simply asked for the maximum diplomatic and economic pressure against Myanmar’s brutal dictators.”
The generals, Archbishop Tutu said, can ”smell inertia”.
The outlines of Myanmar’s misery are clear, despite limited access to the country. They include the holding of 1 300 political prisoners, arbitrary arrests, low spending on health and education, forced labour, exploitation of child soldiers, harassment of ethnic minorities and official connivance in opium trafficking.
But for all the debate at Asem and Brussels, despite tougher United States sanctions, despite the unflagging efforts of international activists and the successes of their disinvestment campaign, and despite a recent, personal intervention by Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, Myanmar’s shameful oppression persists largely unchecked.
Annan asked that the UN’s envoy and its human rights investigator be allowed to return to Myanmar. Neither has visited for many months. But the generals, buoyed by international divisions, have not deigned to reply. – Guardian Unlimited Â