At The Sydney Morning Herald Mic Looby, who co-authored the 2001 Lonely Planet guide to Burma, has weighed into the ongoing debate about Burma sanctions. It is well worth reading in full. One of the key paragraphs launches a broad attack:
If a handful of Australian-based companies are guilty of indirectly supporting an oppressive military regime, where does that leave neighbouring human-rights abusers such as China and Thailand? Surely to narrow our sights on business links to Burma is to ignore China’s implicit support of the Burmese regime, and Thailand’s exploitation of Burmese refugees.
8 responses so far ↓
1 e.r. // Oct 4, 2009 at 11:31 am
If the sanctions haven’t worked, it’s because they’re not universally applied. Burma could be a typical case of right application of economic sanctions, due to the complete control of the economy by the military oligarchy in power. People are on the fringe, they’re already wounded, not by sanctions but by the criminal mismanagement and the uninterrupted robbery of the regime. A universal implementation of sanctions by Burma’s neighbours could shift the balance and really strangle the dictatorship. The fact that it’s an unlikely perspective is not a reason to turn into the opposite way. Existing sanctions should stay, democratic powers should not give up but instead fighting for their widespread application. All the rest is sophistry.
2 Johpa Deumlaokeng // Oct 5, 2009 at 3:01 am
Looby’s argument is that tired argument of the lazy not wanting to have to draw the line at some point. On the continuum of good and evil, sure we can point out human rights abuses in Thailand, in China, and heck even a few abuses in the US or Australia, and place those countries onto the same continuum. But the question is whether one is willing to draw the line somewhere? It is simply disingenuous to compare the ongoing sordid situation in Burma with the failings in neighboring states. One can certainly make the case against the effectiveness of sanctions and boycotts in regards to Burma, and those are indeed hot topics with persuasive arguments on both sides. But the military rulers in Burma have clearly placed their actions far further down the continuum than have the ruling factions in most other countries in the region.
3 hclau // Oct 5, 2009 at 3:14 pm
It just politics, whether it is local politics or geopolitics, it is the same.
Western countries, like the USA or Australia, does not fare any better on the moral scale than any eastern countries, like China or japan when it comes to geopolitics. Screaming loudest about democracy does not make one right. This is particularly true when it comes to the US. In any “democratic election” in the third world that the US has influence in, only acceptable “freely” elected candidate must be the one supported and favoured my the US. If someone else gets elected, then he / she is not recognised and the elected govt is called a “regime”.
Why “regime” has become a dirty word beats me.
The same goes wih saunctions. The reasons that it doesn’t work is because, saunctions are never applied evenly. It is only applied on the insistance of western “powers” and only on “regime” unfriendly to western “powers” Given that scenario, how should the rest of the “non-aligned” world respond?
ps – my apologies for all the ” ” quotation marks
4 Moe Aung // Oct 6, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Johpa Deumlaokeng,
Yes, the Burmese generals happen to occupy the lowest rung of the lowest, and you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
Engagement, maybe, since sanctions have proved to be a very blunt instrument and ineffectual in the end. Appeasement however is politically untenable and plain stupid given the total intransigence on the part of the junta, never mind Webb and the rest of the business lobby itching to get a piece of the action. Let’s see if the US gets anywhere with this change of tack.
5 rose metro // Oct 6, 2009 at 7:37 pm
It seems to me that one problem with the sanctions debate is the assumption that there is a clear separation between a small group of evil generals and “the people of Burma,” a large, oppressed mass who manage to avoid having any connection to the regime. In reality, aren’t there many people in between, who may have family members or friends in mid-level bureaucracy or in the USDA, but who may also favor political change? There may be some people who are totally innocent and others who are absolutely guilty, but there are many more on a spectrum between these extremes. The whole good vs. evil, people vs. generals rhetoric doesn’t seem to reflect the compromises people living inside Burma make in order to survive, protect their families, and keep their jobs. The problem is that people in the West are usually only willing to help poor, downtrodden angels (or monks!) who struggle single-mindedly for democracy. But we don’t want to get our hands dirty by reaching out to say, most civil servants, whose labor props up the regime, but who are certainly not raking in the cash or executing people.
6 Moe Aung // Oct 7, 2009 at 9:53 am
rose metro,
A very valid point. The military elite and the people of course do not exist in isolation from each other. The former needs to exploit and the latter must make a living somehow. Many families have members in both camps. The army rank and file are sons of ordinary people who bear the brunt of military misrule, whether they live in the Delta or in the hills. It’s not even democracy, a catch-all term handy as a slogan, but peace, rule of law, fairness, opportunities and progress for all the diverse peoples of Burma that are conspicuous by their absence. It’s the inability to share the national pie, not content with just the lion’s share.
That’s precisely why we must involve the army rank and file, not just civil servants, in our struggle for freedom in order to improve the odds, to level the playing field, to have a fighting chance for the people to win through. The crucial emphasis has to be on an all inclusive unity and self-reliance, not having to depend too much on international support, be it sanctions or engagement.
7 kim johnson // Oct 7, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Moe Aung’s comment on ‘all inclusive unity’ has me thinking about the Thai border. There continues to be armed conflict between ethnic minorities: cease-fire signatories vs. non-signatories. Sanctions mean little to people living along the Thai-Burma border and most are not familiar with the NLD. While in theory, there is one ‘enemy’ (the Tatmadaw) and one fight (democracy), in practice there are multiple clashes and a number of ethnic minorities who do not see themselves as Burmese and are fighting for independance/autonomy, not a governing system, be it democracy or other. For engagement to bring about effective political change in Burma, businesses, governments, whomever chooses to engage, must do so not only with the Burman-lead government, but also with the ethnic minorities.
8 Moe Aung // Oct 8, 2009 at 7:41 am
kim johnson,
The junta is a dab hand at the time-honoured divide-and-rule tactics which it employs both within and between groups. Whilst unity must be forged between the Burman majority and the nationalities in this struggle, not least to underpin a genuine national reconciliation process, the chances of the minorities alone, either individually or in a united front, overthrowing the dictatorship are very slim. Only the Karen ever came close at the outbreak of the rebellion in 1949. The problem is compounded by the fact that almost all our minority groups have smaller minority groups within themselves. The Buddhist Karen that the DKBA claims to represent are not even a demographic minority, only in the Christian dominated KNU.
An all-inclusive unity in practice has to mean reaching a critical mass which the Burmans can achieve on their own in Rangoon and other towns and cities. Only this time political work must be done on the army rank and file to win them over to the side of the people for the popular struggle to grow some real teeth. We must not let the people come out in mass protests and sacrifice themselves in vain over and over again.
It is all the more important for the nationalities to realize this is a common fight against a common enemy for the junta is the very embodiment of Burman chauvinism welded to militarism, and they cannot afford to simply look on in bemused interest as in 1988. If we fail to learn our lessons from six decades of civil war and nearly a half century of military dictatorship, perhaps we do not deserve to win.
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