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IT’S
unfortunate that the ruling junta in Myanmar, instead of
seizing the moment, so to speak, to prove that it has
been so jolted by Cyclone Nargis that it will henceforth
pay more attention—and give back more resources—to its
long-oppressed people, chose instead to be true to its
paranoid self.
Very
quietly, on Tuesday, as humanitarian teams from the
outside world raced against time to save from hunger,
disease and exposure an estimated million people from
whom the junta had already kept away such vital help,
the Burmese generals informed their most famous prisoner
her detention will be extended for one more year.
Why?
Just because.
Just
because she happens to be Aung San Suu Kyi, the thorn in
their side for the past 18 years—of which she spent 12
in detention—as she kept reminding them and the world,
in her eloquent though nonviolent way, that it remains
one of the few oppressive regimes in the region. A
regime with a total disdain for democracy and such a
paranoid view of its people it carved out a new seat of
government, 300 kilometers away from its former capital,
where it could continue to hold away in a fortress-like
enclave over the fortunes of a people under military
heel for over four decades.
Of
course, some people might take the specious argument
that in these times of humanitarian crisis, everyone’s
attention should be focused on saving as many lives as
possible, and politics should take a back seat. Yet it’s
precisely this post-Nargis crisis that has reminded the
world yet again that, at least in Burma’s case, you
can’t make the argument that politics obstructs
development and that democracy distracts people from the
pursuit of economic progress.
For over
40 years the ruling junta had full control of this
resource-rich Southeast Asian nation, yet had nothing to
show for it—as the aftermath of the cyclone had shown
outsiders who were first to come in. Two days ago, in
the “Perspective” section of this paper, a special
report by journalist Inday Espina Varona on the lives of
Burmese living near the Myanmar border with Mae Sot in
Thailand showed that long before the cyclone struck—and
Nargis, by the way, spared that region—the Burmese
villagers had been living in gut-wrenching misery.
Unlike
its Asean neighbors, like, for instance, Vietnam,
Singapore or Malaysia, which went through phases in
their march to development where they were accused of
certain authoritarian policies or actions,
Burma’s
government had been in unremittingly dictatorial mode,
yet had nothing to show for taking such “political
control-versus-economic development” mode.
Singapore
and Malaysia have since made tremendous progress, and
Vietnam—ah,
what can one say of its blistering growth and how it has
used its human resources to focus precisely on those
sectors that would help them in the long term, like
agriculture. Wonder no more why it’s one of the world’s
biggest rice exporters.
Tragically, the junta in
Burma
cannot provide one shred of evidence that it has used
“control” to marshal resources for the greater good.
Instead, all we find is the evidence that it has been
the worst enemy of its own people. Indeed, it is hard to
find parallels in modern times of such degree of
alienation.
Now,
this alienation is finding a convenient mask in the
junta’s “cooperation” with the outside world which has
come to help the cyclone victims. Sen. Richard Gordon
who, by virtue of his long experience in the Red Cross
movement, now directs Manila’s humanitarian aid to
Burma, had a point in insisting to Asean that, to ensure
quick and efficient action and preclude junta fears of
politically colored assistance, Asean members should
marshal their respective Red Cross groups for the joint
operation.
Indeed,
there’s a point in engaging the rulers at this time, as
the point of the mission is to reach as many needy
people as possible and give timely relief.
But it
doesn’t mean the outside world should keep quiet about
the junta’s continuing allergy to democracy. The aid
being given now isn’t tied, because the governments and
peoples marshaled by Ban Ki-Moon’s call for help for
Burma put only one condition for helping: The junta must
do everything to help them get the aid to those who need
it—not prop up the huge military establishment on whose
bayonets this regime has rested its heel for 40 years.
Having
said that, the denunciation promptly issued Wednesday by
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. against the
extension of Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi’s detention is not
out of sync with the massive humanitarian campaign.
Pimentel
hit it right on the head when he said the extension is a
clear sign that Myanmar’s ruling junta “does not
understand what democracy means.”
He
accused the generals of treating her detention “as if
she were a document like a driver’s license that needs
renewing every year.”
Pimentel
proposed that the solution is for the United Nations
Security Council to understand that no “soft-glove
treatment” will work with the junta.
“The UN
Security Council must do what needs to be done to make
the ruling junta respect the human rights of its own
people,” Pimentel said, adding that the Security Council
should not wait for Asean to do its thing.
Asean,
in his view, is “weighed down by its own outdated
rhetoric of noninterference in the affairs of
Myanmar.
The illogic of that stance is that in matters of
violating the human rights of people, no country in the
world has the right to say that that is their own
affair.”
It is
good that key donors were quoted by wire agencies as
saying that outrage over Suu Kyi’s house arrest will not
detract from relief work.
And the
UN’s Mr. Ban was quoted as saying that while he
regretted the extension, Myanmar appeared “to be moving
in the right direction” with cyclone relief by allowing
some international aid workers into the most devastated
regions of the Irrawaddy Delta—previously sealed off to
foreigners.
But at
the end of the day, the outside world should not be
deluded into feeling “indebted” to the junta for
“allowing” them to help the Burmese people. The junta
let them in, simply because it had no other choice.
“All the
major obstacles we’ve been facing have been resolved.
Now the relief effort will scale up more quickly,” said
Richard Horsey, spokesman for the UN’s disaster-relief
arm in
Bangkok,
according to one wire report.
That’s
great news. But it cannot detract from, or be used to
paper over, the fact that in Yangon, the nation’s
conscience will stay detained for one more year. |
