BANGKOK - On November 7, 2010, on the occasion
of Myanmar's first elections in 20 years, Amnesty International commented that
the polls which had "presented an opportunity for Myanmar to make
meaningful human rights changes on its own terms" were instead "being
held against a backdrop of political repression and systematic violence."
A year on, what is the state of play?
Reading the commentary of the past several
months - much of it in this newspaper - is of limited help. That optimists and
pessimists have emerged would normally be productive, except that these camps
are more and more categorically opposed to one another. With few exceptions,
Myanmar watchers of all stripes have increasingly dug their heels firmly into
doctrinaire territory, unwilling to concede even the most basic (and often simply
factual) points to the other side.
This has not only left the Myanmar debate in a
polarized state, but more importantly has hindered the sort of clear, objective
assessment on which the right human rights and other policy decisions depend.
To a certain degree, this confusion is understandable since for years (if not
decades) there was little room for nuanced thinking on Myanmar.
"To sanction or not to sanction" was
one of the few points of contention, itself located within a broad consensus -
certainly in the West and among much of Asia and the global South as well -
that Myanmar was a (choose your adjective: political, economic, humanitarian,
public health, educational, human rights ...) disaster on a bleak trajectory.
Since the elections last year, however, that
trajectory has changed direction, such that it is no longer possible to
interchange the litany of adjectives or speak of Myanmar - as many commentators
still do - as a black-or-white situation. Nor is it advisable to do so. The
human rights situation in Myanmar must be disaggregated, and addressed on that
basis.
The qualified good
There is political and economic change
underway in Myanmar, much of which could be to the improvement of people's
civil and political, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. Those who
deny this are simply not paying attention or are allowing their personal,
political or institutional agendas to get in the way.
Aside from releasing pro-democracy icon Aung
San Suu Kyi from house arrest a week after the elections and a late April 2011
inaugural speech by President Thein Sein that promised increased political
participation, for six months Myanmar's new government enacted few positive
changes.
Since July however, a steady stream of new
moves and policies has become apparent, albeit of greatly varying significance
to the human rights situation. Other than the appointment of a National Human
Rights Commission (discussed below), a guardedly positive development but whose
focus is largely uncertain, almost all have been confined to the political and
economic spheres and centers.
Myanmar's Labor Minister Aung Gyi has met four
times with Suu Kyi, and Thein Sein has met her once in talks she described - in
contrast to those with Aung Gyi four years ago - as a "positive
development." She has twice been permitted to travel outside of Yangon,
and unlike in May 2003 when government-backed thugs attacked her motorcade in
Depayin and killed or injured over 100 of her supporters, her trips this year
occurred without incident.
And contrary to declaring her National League
for Democracy (NLD) political party illegal after it refused to register under
new electoral laws in 2010, the government has invited it to reregister under
amended provisions of those laws. These events show a small improvement in the
freedoms of expression and association, particularly as they involve a former
prisoner of conscience whose house arrest was illegally extended just months
before last year's elections.
More significant, if still tentative, steps
toward increased freedom of expression have come in relation to Myanmar's once
robust media industry. In October, Radio Free Asia cited Tint Swe, director of
the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, as saying that censorship is
inconsistent with democratic values and more political content has been allowed
in recent months.
Again, enter Suu Kyi: previously strictly
prohibited in the domestic media, her name and picture have been allowed to
appear and for the first time in 23 years the authorities permitted her in
September to publish her own piece in the Pyithu Khit News Journal. Internet
restrictions have also been substantially reduced; the websites of both
international outlets and those run by Myanmar exiles - almost uniformly
critical of the government - are no longer blocked. The authorities recently
signaled a lifting of a six-year ban on satellite television receivers as well.
While these changes improve freedom of
expression in Myanmar in relation to both the transmission/dissemination and
reception of information and mark a relaxation of draconian restrictions during
(when the Internet was severed altogether) and after 2007's "Saffron"
revolution, they are not supported by changes to the relevant laws.
Nor are they unqualified in practice. Not only
did the authorities cut all political content from an exclusive interview of
Suu Kyi by the Messenger News in September, but more seriously, on the day
after UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar visited
the country in August, former military officer Nay Myo Zin was sentenced to 10
years in prison for allegedly sending abroad a political document on how to
achieve democracy.
One month later, Sithu Zeya, a young reporter
with the exile-run Democratic Voice of Burma, already serving an eight-year
prison term, had his sentence extended by a decade under the 2004 Electronic
Transactions Law. Extensive legal reform in relation to not only the media but
to freedom of expression generally is long overdue in Myanmar, and the
persecution via prosecution of journalists should stop immediately.
Closely related to freedom of expression are
the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, which in passing the Labor
Organization Bill last month Myanmar took a substantial step toward promoting
and protecting. The law allows workers to form trade unions - effectively
banned previously under the 1962 Trade Unions Act - and to legally go on
strike. The important matter of whether the unions will be independent of the
government, however, remains to be seen.
In the same speech in which he promised
increased political participation, President Thein Sein also pledged to fight
poverty in Myanmar. This was a welcome message considering the government's
initially obstructive response to Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Recent months have
seen a mixed record in Myanmar, still weak on the humanitarian side, somewhat
stronger but still with much room for improvement on development.
Currently, the humanitarian situation in
Myanmar is especially grave in several ethnic minority states where armed
conflict is taking place, as well as in Rakhine and Chin States where food
insecurity is severe. Despite slow movement in the right direction, however,
the government has kept in place lengthy and complex administrative procedures
for obtaining travel permits both for those who already have a presence and for
new humanitarian agencies seeking permission to work in the country.
In conflict areas, authorities have in some
cases simply blocked any and all access to the tens of thousands of persons
internally displaced by the fighting, especially those in camps on the
Myanmar-China border. These practices should cease immediately.
At the same time, the international donor community
needs to respond to the "humanitarian imperative" in Myanmar,
especially by addressing people's lack of access to minimum essential levels of
economic, social and cultural rights. In particular, this requires them to meet
pledges made for relief and/or recovery after Cyclones Nargis (May 2008) and
Giri (October 2010) so long as they are satisfied that distribution of
humanitarian aid is provided transparently, is for the purposes agreed upon,
and is based solely on need.
Organizations and local communities have also
highlighted the need for a stronger international response to the humanitarian
disaster in the latest conflict areas (near the Myanmar-China border). The
rights of people whose lives have been devastated by these events should not be
held hostage to politics by either Myanmar's new government or the
international community.
Myanmar's development situation is slightly
better but more complicated. Five years after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria decided to leave Myanmar, partly on account of
reported government interference, the new administration signed an agreement in
November 2010 welcoming it back. This move, most positive in itself, should
have the additional effect of allowing the Three Diseases Fund, which had
filled the gap left by Global Fund, to focus more on other critical health care
issues such as maternal and child health.
In July, the Myanmar government also raised
substantially state pensions for nearly a million people, most of them poor,
and announced plans to provide micro-credit for poor farmers. Last week it
finished hosting a visit by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to discuss
unifying its foreign exchange rate policy and lifting certain currency
restrictions, something which could also be to the economic benefit of its
cash-strapped citizens, and agreed to increase its assistance to migrants
working in Thailand.
These initiatives should be acknowledged by
the international community. At the same time, there are reasons for continuing
concerns such that increasing international assistance and cooperation and
lifting the restrictions under which multilateral agencies (such the IMF, World
Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the UN Development Program) continue to work
in Myanmar should be matched by the government making additional moves of its
own.
It should reallocate more resources to the
social, educational, and public health sectors, which currently combined
receives only about 5% of gross domestic product (GDP).
Myanmar should also utilize the estimated $5
billion in foreign reserves it has accumulated over the years, mostly from the
sale of natural resources, toward advancing the economic, social, and cultural
rights of its people. Last month on a bilateral basis Japan at least partly
demonstrated this attention to Myanmar's domestic policies by citing
unspecified "progress" in Myanmar in its reported decision to resume
official development assistance there, which it had suspended after the Saffron
Revolution in 2007.
Pessimists take note: politically and
economically there are limited - but real - human rights changes taking place
in Myanmar. While the government must do a great deal more, nothing in the way
last year's elections were orchestrated suggested this would be the case a year
on.
The categorically bad
Unfortunately, what many optimists disregard
is that these changes are confined to Myanmar's political and economic centers.
There is another story in Myanmar concerning a substantial portion of the
civilian population that has been ignored, sidelined or outright dismissed by
many since the story of the "qualified good" broke: serious human
rights and humanitarian law violations in several ethnic minority areas.
The irony is that the event most often
referenced in relation to the recent political and economic reforms - last
year's parliamentary elections - is the same event that marked the start of
this "categorically bad" development.
On the very day of the polls, ethnic minority
Karen elements launched an attack on the Myanmar army in the border town of
Myawaddy. March and June this year marked respectively an intensification of
conflict with various ethnic minority armed groups in Shan State and the
breaking of a 15-year ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in
Kachin State. Smaller conflicts continued or resumed as well in Kayan (Karenni)
and Mon States.
While the civilian population almost always
suffers in conflict zones, the critical difference in this fighting - for both
the Myanmar government and the international community - is that civilians have
been a target set of the Myanmar army. From Kayin (Karen) State (and bordering
parts of Bago and Tanintharyi Regions), there are recent and credible accounts
of the army using prison convicts as porters, forcing them to act as human
shields and mine-sweepers.
In Kachin State, sources report extrajudicial
executions, children killed by shelling and other indiscriminate attacks,
forced labor, and illegal confiscation of food and property. And last week
Amnesty International spoke with ethnic Shan civilians who recounted stories of
torture, arbitrary detention and forced relocation.
As a result, there are roughly 30,000
"new" internally displaced persons in Shan State and a similar number
in or near Kachin State (including a small number of refugees), in addition to
approximately 36,000 internally displaced persons in Kayin State. In October,
the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium reported that in the past year alone
112,000 persons were forced from their homes in Myanmar (to say nothing of the more
than 150,000 Burmese refugees in Thailand and those in other neighboring
countries).
Benjamin Zawacki
Asia Time
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