As to where Than Shwe is in all this, there are three possibilities. The first, but least likely, is that he has confounded everyone’s expectations and genuinely retired, which is what the regime would like us to believe. Indeed, Burma’s Information Minister Kyaw Hsan told the Wall Street Journal that Than Shwe is ‘in his house, doing a lot of reading, and enjoying a peaceful time’.38 The speaker of the Lower House of Parliament, Shwe Mann, said that ‘the senior general is really retired’, and went on to state that ‘The senior general is absolutely not concerned with the party, nor the government, nor our parliament, nor legislative organisations.’ While it is true that he is no longer involved in day-to-day policy matters, it seems very unlikely that he would have disengaged completely. Most people tell me that his role is rather like that of Ne Win; government ministers pay courtesy calls on Than Shwe from time to time and seek his views on the key issues of the day, but that his influence will gradually wane. It is possible, though, that the whole reform exercise is a clever game of divide and rule masterminded, or at least approved, by the great psychological warrior himself, to undermine the democracy movement and play games with the international community. A third possibility, which has a certain logic, is that Than Shwe saw what happened to Egypt’s Mubarak, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, and other dictators, and concluded that a controlled, gradual transition process in which his security and that of his family is protected, is preferable to a violent popular uprising in which his own fate could be in jeopardy. After all, Father San Germano’s description of the Burmese people in the early twentieth century is still an appropriate description of Than Shwe and the regime today: ‘There is no contempt, oppression or injustice they will not exercise towards their fellow men when they can assure themselves of the protection of government.’39
12
The Future?
‘Those who love stay awake when duty calls, wake up from sleep when someone needs help; those who love keep burning, no matter what, like a lighted torch. Those who love take on anything, complete goals, bring plans to fruition. Those who do not love faint and lie down on the job.’
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
BURMA TRULY IS at a crossroads. For the first time since Ne Win’s coup in 1962, there may finally be a possibility that Burma could establish a meaningful democracy – something few would have dared predict until very recently.
Yet there is still a long way to go. Although Thein Sein and his regime have promised that the reforms they are implementing are ‘irreversible’, Aung San Suu Kyi rightly warns that the test will be how much support for change exists within the military as a whole. ‘I wouldn’t say it is unstoppable. I think there are obstacles, and there are some dangers,’ she says.1 U Win Tin is more outspoken, warning that hopes have been raised and if they are not met, another popular uprising is likely. ‘The simmering discontent is there,’ he told The Times. ‘President Obama said that there is light in Burma and we can see the light. But, here in Burma, we are still inside the tunnel.’2
Nevertheless, Thein Sein’s reforms are evidence that years of international pressure have begun to make an impact. Bringing Burma’s human rights record to the agenda of the United Nations Security Council, threatening the establishment of a United Nations Commission of Inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity, which could have led to a prosecution of the Generals in the International Criminal Court, combined with targeted economic sanctions have been the campaign themes of activists around the world. No single measure can be accorded credit for impacting the regime, but the combination of pressure and, more recently, high-level engagement appears to have communicated a clear message: keep suppressing, raping, enslaving and killing your people, and you will remain a pariah state; but if you change your ways, pressure can be lifted and you can be welcomed as an accepted member of the international community. That message was most clearly articulated during the historic visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2011, followed a few weeks later by that of British Foreign Secretary William Hague, both the first visits of their kind since 1955. On 13 April, 2012, David Cameron became the first British prime minister to visit the country in living memory, and the first Western leader to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein in Burma. The unprecedented, and previously unimaginable, photo-calls, and substantive meetings, they all had with Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi symbolise the crossroads which Burma has reached. Their visits have been followed by countless others.
The courage of the Burmese people is primarily responsible for bringing them to this point. However, the support of international human rights organisations and aid agencies, large and small, politicians of all political perspectives, and ordinary, unknown individuals from a wide range of countries who have stood in solidarity with the people of Burma should not be underestimated. When foreigners have taken the time to learn about the people of Burma, and their suffering, particularly by visiting the country and its borders and hearing stories first-hand, they can rarely walk away from the cause.
Politicians whom I have taken to Burma’s borders have been converted into some of the country’s strongest champions. Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s current Secretary of State for International Development, was one. ‘It was horrendous. The stories that were told, mostly by widows, were heartbreaking. It is the only time in my life that I have ever been seized by an almost uncontrollable spasm of fury,’ he said after a visit to a camp for internally displaced peoples just inside Karen State, Burma in 2007. ‘These people, with horrendous stories, were living in dire conditions. They had a stream that they used for washing, drinking, defecating. But there was a wonderful sense of community and solidarity. The Burma Army was terrifyingly close, separated from us by a short distance with just a few landmines and Karen soldiers.’ Similarly John Bercow, now Speaker of Britain’s House of Commons, visited the Thailand–Burma border with me in 2004. ‘I was struck by the sheer savagery of some of the human rights abuses about which we heard testimony. I met parents who had seen their children shot dead in front of them, and children whose parents had been shot dead in front of them.’ His commitment was fuelled by memories of the people he had met.
I recall meeting a man who had been subjected to water torture. I asked him what he thought of the Tatmadaw soldier who had done this to him, and he replied in a very matter-of-fact way: ‘I love him. He is my brother.’ Someone who combines determination with such dignity and grace deserves our continuing support and advocacy. I felt that if that is how he behaved, it is my job to use what limited influence I have got, and certainly the voice I have and the pen I possess and the opportunity of a public platform that I enjoy, to ratchet up the level of attention to what is going on in Burma.
The challenge also motivated him. ‘There was the sense that there is this utterly incorrigible, shameless, sadistic dictatorship putting two fingers up at the world and that I regarded as a challenge. I believe passionately in the UN Responsibility to Protect mechanism, and I believe we have a duty to protect the people in Burma and on the borders who are innocent victims of one of the most hideous regimes on the face of the planet.’ In 2007, Bercow and I travelled to the India–Burma border to meet Chin refugees, the first time an elected politician from the West, and possibly anywhere in the world, had been to that border.
Glenys Kinnock, a former British Foreign Office Minister, former Member of the European Parliament and wife of the former leader of the Labour Party, now in the House of Lords, is another champion of Burma. In 1996, she went to Rangoon to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, and left just two hours before a mob attack on the democracy leader. ‘It was a very unpleasant atmosphere and a very tense trip,’ Kinnock said afterwards. ‘I have never seen such deprivation and such malnourished children.’3
Politicians from other countries have visited the borders as well, including Irish MP Simon Coveney, who travelled with me in 2005, US Congressman Joseph Pitts, Australian parliamentarians and members of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamen
tary Myanmar Caucus, established to bring together MPs with a concern for Burma from across the South East Asia region.
But you don’t have to be a politician or a full-time activist to make a difference. People such as my great friend Martin Panter, an Australian doctor who has travelled twice a year for the past two decades to the Thailand–Burma border, and occasionally the India–Burma border, to conduct medical training, and who introduced me to Burma, deserve recognition.
The role of the individual is illustrated perhaps most inspiringly by Deklan Stokle and his family. At the age of just eight years old, Deklan’s parents took him to the Thailand–Burma border for the first time, and what he learned there changed his life. He and his family have returned to the border to visit refugees most years since then, and when he was sixteen he travelled inside Burma. He returned home to Newcastle, in the north of England, having visited orphans in Pathein, promising himself to tell others about Burma. He has spoken in churches, youth groups and schools, and in 2010 when Pope Benedict XVI visited the United Kingdom, Deklan was given an opportunity to speak at the vigil in Hyde Park. In front of 80,000 people he told the crowd:
Six years ago, at the age of twelve, I looked into the eyes of an orphan from Burma. For the first time in my life I saw the poor and oppressed as human beings. I saw a child who was no different to me. I saw a child who deserved everything I had. I could see that and I was only twelve.
I have lived with the refugee children of Burma and I have shared their meagre rations of food. In return they ask I share their story with the world. I have a hope that one day all the children of Burma, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and those of no religion will live together in freedom and peace …
I am asking you to fight the Burmese Junta, not with guns and bullets, but with prayers and actions. I am asking you to fight against this injustice and to be the voice for the voiceless. These people are human beings and deserve the same dignity and freedom that we enjoy. For me being a Catholic means standing up for those suffering an injustice – whether on my doorstep or 6000 miles away.
Such international efforts appear to have led Thein Sein to recognise that the status quo is unsustainable. Even with the political, diplomatic, economic and military support of China, India, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Russia and North Korea, the humanitarian and economic catastrophe awaiting Burma if it does not change is too great to keep things as they are. He, and others in the regime, do not want to become a client state of China, which is what they will fast become if they do not take steps to improve relations with the United States and Europe, to act as a counterweight. Could Thein Sein prove to be Burma’s equivalent of South Africa’s F.W. de Klerk, the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev or Indonesia’s B.J. Habibie? Quite possibly, precisely because in all three cases their motivation was similar. None of these reform-minded leaders were originally real democrats – they embarked on reforms with the intention of preserving the system and protecting themselves, recognising that leaving things as they were would lead to chaos and upheaval. In all three cases, however, once the door to reform was opened a crack, the momentum grew until complete change became unstoppable. Events moved far faster than Gorbachev, de Klerk or Habibie anticipated. If Thein Sein proves to be in the same mould, the scenario in Burma could be similar.
History shows that dictators do not last for ever. Herculean struggles that at times appear hopeless have resulted in astonishing transformations. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the spread of democracy throughout Eastern Europe; the end of apartheid in South Africa; the fall of Suharto and the establishment of democracy in Indonesia; the independence of East Timor after a quarter of a century of Indonesian military occupation; the demise of the Marcos regime in the Philippines; the transformation from authoritarianism to democracy in South Korea, Taiwan and much of Latin America; the toppling of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia; the victory for democracy against Asia’s longest serving dictator, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in the Maldives; and even the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, albeit by controversial international armed intervention – all these and other examples demonstrate that the human spirit yearns for freedom, that such a desire is universal, and that in the end, freedom will win.
In 2011, a movement swept through North Africa, bringing down the twenty-three-year rule of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, the thirty-year rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the forty-two-year rule of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Driven by the traditional methods of mass popular protest, combined with the use of modern technology to communicate developments, this could provide a model for future freedom movements.
In the demonstrations in Burma in 2007, mobile telephones and Internet technology proved vital to communicating news to the outside world from a country whose regime banned foreign journalists from entering. Facebook, Twitter, Google, BlackBerry messenger, email and other technologies will take on ever-increasing importance. An editorial in The Times describes Twitter, along with Facebook, as ‘a potent tool for democratic engagement’ and concludes that the movements in Tunisia and Egypt were not only precipitated, as in Burma, by rising prices and anger at corruption. ‘They are also the product of a heady atmosphere seeded by new freedoms of expression and information,’ the newspaper concludes. ‘This kind of freedom of information and freedom of communication has many positive sides. It undermines regimes that have sought to bolster their power by keeping their people ignorant. It makes strangers less strange to each other. It also exposes bad arguments to daylight and scrutiny … Social networks were built to make friends: they are turning into places to take on your enemies.’4
I have had the privilege of witnessing and, in a small way participating in, transitions from oppressive rule to democracy in two countries. In 2002, I was living in East Timor, having for several years supported the campaign for its liberation. At midnight on 20 May 2002, after centuries of Portuguese colonial rule, twenty-five years of brutal Indonesian military occupation, and three years of UN-led transitional administration, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste was born. Moments after the new flag had been raised and the national anthem sung, I turned to the man next to me, who had been the first Timorese to be forced into exile soon after the Indonesian invasion in 1975. He was a Catholic priest, Father Francisco Maria Fernandes, and he was an old friend of mine. I asked him if he had ever believed in all his years of exile that he would live to see this day. He smiled, nodded, and said: ‘Yes I did. Throughout our struggle, people all around the world used to say to me, “Why do you carry on? You are fighting a losing battle. Indonesia will never give you freedom. The world will never help you. Why don’t you just give up.” But we had one thing those people did not know about. We trusted God. This was a victory of faith.’ As he uttered those final words, fireworks lit up the night sky, providing a tangible symbol of light penetrating the darkness. That principle of faith – whether religious or philosophical – applies to all movements for freedom: faith in philosophical and moral, religious and spiritual beliefs, not giving up, not allowing circumstances or doubt to deter, not losing hope.
In 2006, I visited the Maldives, a country more often associated with tropical paradise vacations, beautiful beaches and bright blue seawater glistening in the sunlight than with dictatorship. In reality, the Maldives was ruled with an iron fist by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who suppressed critics and jailed opponents. Gayoom, who had ruled the archipelago since 1978, had, however, appointed some ministers in his government who were reformers, and in the face of growing pressure from his people and the international community, he allowed a reform process to begin. Precisely what his intentions were only he knows, but my strong suspicion is that he intended it as a public relations exercise, to buy off his opponents and keep his critics at bay. It snowballed into a more meaningful transition. When I visited, I met the lead reformer, the Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed. He arranged for me to visit a journalist, Jennifer Latheef, and th
e Leader of the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), Mohamed Nasheed, both under house arrest. Nasheed had spent several years in solitary confinement in prison, and had been repeatedly tortured. After my visit, I produced a report, in which I concluded that if it was serious about reform, the regime needed to release Nasheed and Latheef as a matter of urgency. Within months, they were freed and two years later the Maldives’ first free multi-party elections were held. The man I had met under house arrest in 2006 became the first freely elected President of the Maldives.
In all these struggles, the courage of the people of these countries themselves, combined with solidarity and support from people outside, took them from tyranny to liberty. The same can be achieved in Burma. The people of Burma have shown extraordinary courage, commitment, sacrifice and hard work in their struggle for freedom, and in Aung San Suu Kyi they have a leader every bit as inspiring and unifying as Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Xanana Gusmão or Mohamed Nasheed. There is no doubt in my mind that, one day, Burma will be free.
When and how? The first of these two questions is impossible to answer. History says it can happen, and the courage of the people inspires confidence that it can happen, but the timing cannot be predicted. Change happened in Eastern Europe, Indonesia, East Timor and Egypt rapidly, and when we least expected it, and the same could be true in Burma. Even the current period of reform was unexpected, and the pace surprising. The question of how is also difficult to predict precisely. If Thein Sein’s reforms take root, if a genuine peace can be negotiated in the ethnic states, and a gradual transition to democracy can be developed, then it could happen in an orderly way. The next major test will be the elections in 2015. If they are truly free and fair, under a reformed constitution, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD could finally be in government. If, however, there proves to be no real substance to Thein Sein’s promises of reform, or an internal coup by hardliners in the regime stalls them, and hopes are dashed, then a more chaotic upheaval is likely, but one which would probably require a convergence of three factors: popular uprising, division within the military and intensified, targeted international pressure. There are many within the ranks of the military whose morale is low, who hate the country’s pariah status, who are not inspired by the Generals, and who harbour a secret admiration for Aung San Suu Kyi. Were they to be reassured that if they defected they could be given safety, and that if change comes they would not be punished, then at the right moment they could turn. The factor that holds them back is the same factor that makes most ordinary civilians in Burma think twice before speaking out: fear. Yet if they heed the words of Aung San Suu Kyi, in her book Freedom from Fear, the potential for Burma is unlimited: ‘Don’t think about whether these things [justice and freedom] will happen. Just continue to do what you believe is right. Later on the fruits of what you do will become apparent on their own. One’s responsibility is to do the right thing.’5 Many Burmese people, whose stories are told in this book, are already following this path. The question for the international community, individuals, organisations and governments, is will we be with them?
Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads Page 30