A Brief Report on Burma

 - by Ko Ko Thett

            Burma (Union of Myanmar) is the largest country on the Southeast Asian Peninsular.  It has a heterogeneous population ten times the size of Finland’s, residing in an area slightly larger than two times the size of Finland.  The Old Burma, prior to British occupation, was a Buddhist kingdom ruled by the majority Burman monarchs.  Today Buman comprises 68 percent of the whole population.  The rest of the demography is composed of minorities: 9 percent of Shan , 7 percent of Karen, 4 percent of Rakhine, 3 percent of Chinese, 2 percent of Indian , 2 percent of Mon, and others.  The centuries-old Burman hegemony was ended by British colonization in 1885. 

            In 1947, nationalist and ethnic leaders, led by Aung San, were assassinated by a rival politician.  As a result of Burmese nationalist struggle and decolonizing world politics following the Second World War, Burma gained independence in January 1948.  Even before the independence, the country was facing the lack of effective national leadership following Aung San’s death.  This eventually led to political infightings in the ruling party, ethnic separatist movements and communist insurgencies simultaneously.  Communist victory in China in 1949 also caused the spill-over of anti-communist Chinese troops into Burma.  The virtual state of nature in the following decades empowered the Burmese armed forces.  The military, in the pretext of non-disintegration of the Union, staged a coup in 1962, ending parliamentary democratic system.  Later the military government metamorphosed into Burma Socialist Programme Party, reducing Burma to a semi-socialist Orwellian state.  Burma, part of the Non-Aligned Movement, continued to remain neutral during the Cold War.  The country had been isolated since the 1960s. 

The 1988 People’s Uprising, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD

              In 1987, the United Nations listed Burma among the Least Developed Nations in the world, along with Ethiopia.  A year later, Burmese people toppled the socialist regime in a nationwide uprising.  The country hit the world news when thousands of demonstrators were shot to death in the streets.  During the six-week long nationwide uprising from August 1988, the civil administrations at local level broke down.  Democracy activists took over the role of administrators in some areas.  All that was brought to an end in September 1988 when the military staged another coup.  As the Burmese army began seek-and-destroy operations against all dissidents in urban areas, thousands of democracy activists, mainly students, fled to Thai-Burma border areas where ethnic separatist groups were based. 

            In 1989, the military regime, in an attempt to project a new image of the country, the name Union of Burma was changed to Union of Myanmar.  The country’s name was changed without consulting to the Burmese people, and the opposition insisted on the use of Burma.  At the same time, the junta promised that it would hold free and fair elections and would hand over the power to the winner of the elections.  It allowed forming of political parties.  The junta backed its own party National Unity Party (NUP), formerly known as the Burma Socialist Programme Party.   

            Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of national hero Aung San, who during the 1988 uprising had become the most popular opposition leader, and other senior dissidents, formed the National League for Democracy (NLD) to take part in the elections.  The junta put Suu Kyi under house arrest a year before May 1990 elections.  Many other capable dissidents were also imprisoned.  Despite this, the NLD won a landslide victory in the elections. Since it was the NLD, not the NUP as the junta expected, which won the elections, the junta refused to honour the opposition’s victory.

            In 1993, the Myanmar regime began a project of National Convention to draft a constitution which would ensure the role of the military in Burma‘s politics.  Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace prize, became the world’s foremost activist for human rights and democracy.  Her party NLD and the military junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), has been caught up in a political impasse since the NLD election victory.  Since 1990, Western international community has imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions against the military regime in support of democratization of Burma. 

Current Problems

• Sixteen years after the election victory of the NLD, Suu Kyi is still under house-arrest and the NLD is still finding means to engage with the junta in a dialogue. On their part, the military has never shown a political will to dialogue.  Instead, they have consolidated their power and created Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), an ultra-nationalist mass party which will protect the military interest in the future.  In November 2005, the SPDC surprised the world when the country’s capital was moved to Pyinmana, 320 km north of Rangoon.  The new capital has been named Naypyidaw, the imperial palace.
• According to latest reports, of the 392 NLD members elected to Parliament in 1990, only 87 are still active in politics; 105 have been jailed, 79 have been forced into silence, 73 have died and 54 have gone into exile.  In February 2006, the NLD made a significant proposal that it would recognize the junta as a ‘de jure government’ if the junta held talk with the opposition.  The proposal has been ignored and the coerced resignation and intimidation of the NLD members intensified.  The detention of NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi was extended for one more year in May 2006.
• No form of political dissent is tolerated in Myanmar.  Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma (AAPPB), a Thailand-based Burmese NGO composed of former political prisoners, lists the names of 1156 prisoners of conscience on their webpage.
• The ethnic population, fighting for their self-determination, has been forced out of the country since the military came into power in the 1960s.  There are refugee camps in the eastern and western borders of the country.  Licence to Rape (May 2002), a collection of testimonies by rape victims and survivors, charges that the SPDC also use sexual violence as a weapon of war in ethnic areas.  The Karen ethnic separatist groups accuse the junta of genocide.  The tacit truce reached between the ethnic army Karen National Union (KNU) and the SPDC broke down when the junta resumed its military operations in Karen state in early 2006.  According to Thailand-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), the refugee population at the camps along Thai-Burma border in December 2005 was 142, 917.  The number has been increasing dramatically.  In May 2006, it was 148, 546.  The figure reflects only the number of officially-registered refugees from ten refugee camps under the care of  the TBBC.  It does not take into account of ethnic Mon refugee camps.  Besides there remain inside Burma thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) who are not identified as refugees.
• Inside the country, there are a myriad of socioeconomic problems.  Myanmar ranks 155 out of 158 countries in the 2005 Corruption Perception Index by the Berlin-based Transparency International.  The education system in Burma is in shambles.  The SPDC only encourages military academies.  The SPDC in fear of student uprisings has been operating universities and schools only intermittently since 1988.  In health sector, the number of AIDS and tuberculosis victims are rising due to the lack of health education and health care infrastructures.  Extrajudicial executions, forced labour and forced relocations remain pervasive in Burma.  Hardship inside the country has caused a Diaspora of Burmese populace into other countries, mostly to Thailand.  A 2002 report by Refugee International and Open Society Institute estimates that there may be up to two millions undocumented Burmese immigrants in Thailand.  Since Thailand lacks a consistent immigration policy, undocumented immigrant workers there are usually subject to human trade, abuse and corruption.