Betraying "Democracy" in Burma
    By J. Sri Raman
    t r u t h o u t | Columnist

    Sunday 22 April 2007

    Monarchy may be on its last legs in two South Asian countries, but it may stage a comeback in a third. Nepal has overthrown its King Gyanendra and is debating a referendum on becoming a republic, and an aging ruler in neighbouring Bhutan has agreed to hold elections of a still-undecided scope. Burma, however, may see the revival of a long-abolished monarchy before the year is out.

    That, at least, is the plan of the military junta that renamed the country Myanmar in 1989 and has denied it democracy for close to two decades. The bizarre plan of the bamboo-curtained country's rulers has apparently received no attention in high places that keep talking of a holy crusade for democracy.

    If all goes according to plans, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta calls itself, will reincarnate itself as the United Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and crown its leader Than Shwe as king by December 2007. The details, according to knowledgeable sources, are under discussion with the outside world too, through diplomatic channels. The only sticking point with the US-led West would seem to be the place in the scheme of things for Aung San Suu Kyi, the symbol of Burma's struggle for democracy.

    The West knows that the scheme will have little credibility without Suu Kyi. It has all along claimed to stand by her and for her freedom from captivity of a length that puts her in the league of living legend Nelson Mandela.

    Next April, in fact, it will be a full 20 years since Suu Kyi returned home from her Oxford home with scholar husband Michael Aris and children to visit her critically ill mother - and stayed on to fight for her people's freedom. From then on, the junta placed her under endlessly repeated terms of house arrest, making it impossible for her ever to reunite with her family. The junta would not let her even see cancer-stricken Aris and sons Kim and Alexander unless she promised never to return to Burma. She put Burma above her family.

    It all started with the elections of 1989, conducted under the junta, which Suu Kyi National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a decisive 80 percent majority. The junta responded by declaring the results null and void. It has never recognised the Burmese peoples' right to representative government ever again.

    The US-headed West claims to have taken steps, including at the United Nations, to press the junta for Suu Kyi's release and for some advance towards democracy in Burma. The fact, however, is that Burma has never really been placed prominently on the agenda of the UN Security Council. China, a member of the council, has obliged by vetoing any anti-junta initiative that seemed imminent.

    The US administration, under President George W. Bush, in its dealings with rulers in Rangoon, has shown not even a semblance of its pretended concern over democracy in Iraq or Iran. Observers have noted (in regional media reports to receive little attention in the West) that US and Western diplomats have voiced exasperation over what they consider an "uncompromising stance" on Suu Kyi's part.

    The alleged obstinacy of "the lady," as the Burmese people refer to her, lies mainly in her opposition to the objectives of the new Constitution under the junta's draft. The West also thinks that it is time she forgot about the elections she won long ago and forsook her claim to power on that basis. Some of the dissatisfied diplomats also think that she can help by letting "a new-generation leadership" emerge in the NLD.

    Meanwhile, a "strategic partner" of the US in South Asia has gone significantly further than the discreet diplomats. The government of India, which Bush has called upon to join the "crusade for democracy," is making its support for the junta less of a secret.

    Recent Indian reports, obviously based on official briefing, speak with warm approval of New Delhi's drive to deepen and broaden economic links with Burma under the junta - despite, it is stressed - the wishes of the West. In December 2006, at a conference on India's foreign policy in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) I met young representatives of Burma's struggle for democracy, and they were bitter about India's unprincipled involvement in "development projects" meant only to legitimize the military rulers further. The recent reports speak in particular of the ambitious project to link India's eastern ports with Burma's Sittwe port.

    Very few indeed would expect New Delhi, pursuing a nuclear deal with the US with panting eagerness, to adopt a line diametrically opposite to Bush's on Burma. This consideration cannot but lend credence to the view that Washington has more on its mind than the merits or otherwise of military rule in Burma.

    The US would seem to be more concerned about the "signals intelligence" constructed on Coco Islands by China, north of India's Andaman Islands, according to experts. By keeping the junta happy, Washington and the Pentagon may hope to acquire a similar facility in the region, as apprehended by some strategic analysts.

    If that happens, it will be yet another instance of the "crusade for democracy " creating yet another area of dangerous tension.