A Brit Speaking to AEIOU Seminar

His country Great Britain had committed three mistakes in Burma during its heyday as a colonial power, said the kingdom's former ambassador to Thailand Derek Tonkin yesterday.

The first was the termination of the Burmese monarchy with the exile of King Thibaw, following the third and final Anglo-Burmese War in 1885.
The second was the classification of the country as an Indian province until 1937 when the country was separated from India and given almost complete control over her internal affairs, according to A History of Southeast Asia by D.G.E. Hall. "The result, therefore, was a dangerous development of communal discord," he wrote.
The third was poppy cultivation, which was legalized under the 1910 Opium Act and the 1938 Opium Rules.

Tonkin, 77, was speaking as a guest speaker at the Chiangmai University, an event organized by the All Ethnic International Open University (AEIOU). He was commenting on the sidelines of his main topic Burma: Reality Check, a look-over-again of the 12 January UN Security Council's rejection of the draft resolution on Burma which was tabled by the United States.

Significantly, he did not mention the routine accusation the British were thrown at by the current rulers of Burma: the divide-and-rule policy. He however remarked that while the French continued to engage its former colonies as good Samaritans, the British had not. The only comfort is that Britain's largest opposition, the Conservation Party, "has a strong position on Burma."

The former diplomat also counseled that the country's official name be reverted to Burma, instead of "Myanmar," which is for foreigners "not easy to say" and triggers" "an instinctive negative reaction." The only English word closest to Myanmar is miasma which means a mass of air that is dirty and smells unpleasant," he quipped, "whereas Burma is related to history and better understood in the West."

He was also frank with his dislike of the word "minorities" to denote the non-Burman ethnic groups in Burma. "I would prefer the word 'nationalities' in most cases like Shans and Mons, who used to be nations in their own right," he said.

All the same, he was against the exercise of the Right of Secession, as stipulated in the 1947 Union Constitution. "The only possible solution is federation," he suggested.

The two-hour talk was packed with more than 60 students, academic and activists, including Sao Seng Suk, Chairman of the Shan Democratic Union. Mr Tonkin however is shunned by other activists who label him as an apologist for Burma's ruling State Peace and Development Council.

[Courtesy of Shan Herald]

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Quote of the year:

There is only one solution.....could first be done by setting up an armed UN corridor in the ethnic areas.... to stop the killing and allow the delivery of humanitarian aid.....Evan Williams

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