Protect or Respect: Burma’s constitutional challenge

The wording of an oath is the pawn in a dangerous power game  in Burma as newly elected democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi flexes her muscles. Her party the National League for Democracy refused to allow its newly elected members to be sworn in at the parliamentary opening in Naypyidaw yesterday. The party made an overhaul of the Constitution one of its principal promises in the recent by-election but the ruling party is refusing to change the oath. Suu Kyi claims this is not a boycott but rather just “waiting for the right time to go” to parliament. The catch is they need to sit in parliament to have any chance of getting their reforms through and some are questioning whether Suu Kyi has picked the right issue to make a stance on. (photo: AFP/File, Ye Aung Thu)

The stand-off comes several weeks after the by-elections which saw the NLD win 40 of the 44 seats it contested. The victory was seen as a transformative moment in Burmese politics but the party remains a small minority in both the upper and lower house of parliament. The by-elections and the gradual opening of Burmese democracy have been driven by president Thein Sein who came to office in March 2011 as the former prime minister and handpicked successor of Than Shwe.

Both Shwe and Sein are military men but the US used the promotion of the latter to press for reforms. In return the US would ease its crippling sanctions and urge its allies to do the same. Sein released Suu Kyi from house arrest and released political prisoners in exchange for diplomatic relations.  Sein gave his first foreign interview in January to the Washington Post and said they not only wanted to engage with the NLD but also with the 11 ethnic groups Burma was at war with. During the interview, Sein brought up the constitution to defend the right of the president to appoint the commander in chief of the armed forces. But Wapo did not follow up with a question of the validity of that constitution.

Burma has been independent since 1947 but its original constitution was torn up the military when Ne Win who came to power in a 1962 coup. The generals orchestrated a second constitution in 1974 but even that was too liberal for the military rulers who seized power in 1988 and they abolished it with along with the offices of cabinet, judiciary and local councils. They ruled without a constitution until 2008 forced to enact new under a supposed “roadmap to democracy”. Outside observers judged it a sham, not least because it reserves a quarter of all seats for the military and prevented Suu Kyi from attaining the presidency due to her non-Burmese husband. 

But the issue Suu Kyi is most worried about now is the oath to defend that constitution.  The NLD wants the oath to be reworded from “abide by and protect the Constitution” to “abide by and respect the Constitution.”  Burmese activist Min Zin said the NPD were picking the wrong battle to fight on.  “Vowing to uphold and abide the constitution does not mean that the opposition can't try to amend it later,” Zin said. “A quick look at the texts of other countries' oaths of office shows that words like uphold and even defend are commonly used, but such language has never prevented anyone from proposing constitutional amendments.”  

The question is why Suu Kyi is making an issue out of it now. She would have been aware of the oath of office prior to the election and should have mentioned it in the campaign. A more likely reason would be to try to slow down the West’s normalisation of relations until there is more substantive progress. On the same day as the parliamentary boycott, the EU agreed to suspend most of its sanctions against Burma for a year.  

Burmese exiles say the West is going too fast. Soe Aung of the Forum for Democracy in Burma said the EU has suspended sanctions knowing that its own benchmarks on Burma have not been met: the unconditional release of all political prisoners and a cessation of attacks against ethnic minorities.  The suspension allows European companies to invest in Burma, which has significant natural resources and borders economic giants China and India. British PM David Cameron said changes were not yet irreversible, “which is why it is right to suspend rather than lift sanctions for good.” Yet it seems highly unlikely that once opened, big business would allow the door to be shut again. Only the immense counterweight of Suu Kyi’s public profile stands between the Burmese Government and Western spoils of commerce without the inconvenience of a public reckoning.

Burma buys time with sham election

To nobody’s great surprise, Burmese military rulers had a sweeping victory in last week’s election. With the last democratically elected leader of the country under house arrest for the last eight years and her party forcibly disbanded, few outside the remote capital Naypyidaw had any faith in the election’s validity. The country has been ruled undemocratically since 1962 by a military proxy party under several different names. It annulled the unfavourable result of the one free election it had in the last 48 years. It was little surprise then to hear they picked up 80 percent of the seats this time round. (picture: SOE THAN WIN/AFP/Getty Images)

But it took a while for even this news to seep out. Silent for three days after the election, State Television finally announced on Wednesday top members of the ruling junta, including army joint chief-of-staff Thura Shwe Mann and Prime Minister Thein Sein, were among those who won seats in Parliament.

We only have State Media’s word for what happened as foreign reporters are not allowed in the country. The tightly controlled local media only takes the Government’s side when it is forced to take a side at all. Yet the people of Burma are not stupid and word of mouth ensures everyone knows what is really happening. A brave few like Muang San strapped on a hidden camera as he went to vote. “I’m a journalist,” he said. “It’s my duty to show the world what is happening in Burma.”

The main opposition party led by the imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi boycotted the election. The Government retaliated by her National League for Democracy party. A breakaway offshoot called the National Democratic Front contested the election against the Government. With no press, no charismatic leader, no scrutiny of the polls and ten times fewer candidates, they were soundly trounced. “The Burmese junta hosted this election in order to whitewash itself internationally," said a banana seller at a market near the biggest city Rangoon.

This overlooks the fact that even this sham of an election has given voters the rare chance to voice their opinions and gain insights into a political culture stunted by an authoritarian government. The Government may struggle to put the genie back in the bottle. But the banana seller’s cynical analysis is mostly spot on.

The very fact an election was held, however irregular, gives the regime kudos and useful bargaining chips in its key relations with other ASEAN countries and China. Due to the repeated criticism of the US and the EU, Burma has become ASEAN’s albatross the association of south east Asian nations has survived due to its policy of turning the other cheek to member excesses but are under enormous pressure to get Burma to conform to international norms. ASEAN countries have offered guarded support for the elections. The real benefit is to give Asean an excuse to ignore further criticisms of the Naypyidaw regime.

The regime itself can also afford to ignore the criticisms. Burma spends at least 40 percent of its national budget on the military compared to 0.4 percent on healthcare and 0.5 percent on education. Its standing army of 500,000 soldiers is the largest in south east Asia. Foreign powers are queuing up to take their money.

In 2009, Burma signed a contract with Russia for the purchase of 20 MiG-29 jet fighters at a cost of nearly US $570 million and many of Burma's future nuclear military purchases may come from fellow rogue state North Korea. China is also a huge contributor as Burma’s third-largest trading partner and provides extensive military, economic and diplomatic support.

While fellow generals across Asia get cosy with the junta tatmadaw, the biggest thorn in their side remains the frail but immensely courageous activist Suu Kyi. The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, democracy activist and daughter of the country’s founder is apparently scheduled to be released Saturday from house arrest. Most observers remain sceptical this will happen as she has been in detention for 15 of the last 21 years despite repeated calls from the international community to release her. A bad sign is today’s decision to reject her appeal against house arrest by the politically motivated Burma’s Supreme Court.

Not all the regime’s enemies are in prison. In the hills, army forces still fight with ethnic groups that don’t want to be a part of Myanmar. Karen separatists are causing havoc on the border with Thailand. Thailand is concerned not because it wants to see a new Karen state, but because unrest at the Mae Sot-Myawaddy crossing is causing economic losses estimated to be in the region of 10 million baht (almost $400,000) this year. The Karen National Union has said it will now join up with five other ethnic rebel groups: the Kachin Independence Army, the Karenni National Progressive Party, the Mon New State Party and the Shan State Army-North.

Burma, for all its half a million strong army, is unable to crush these six ethnic revolt. Neither can the compliant media stop the grumbling on the streets of Rangoon. Like any Government that rules by fear, the Burmese junta philosophy is driven by desperate fear it will be overthrown. It has to prove the election victory is not pyrrhic, otherwise its enemies will strike stronger than ever. But at the very least it buys them more time to plan the counter-attack. The paranoid tragedy that is Burma’s politics still has a few acts to go before the curtain falls.

Aung San Suu Kyi: death by the tatmadaw’s thousand cuts

Burmese military have banned media and diplomats from attending the farcical trial of Aung San Suu Kyi who is charged with breaking the terms of her house arrest. The move is the latest in a string of outrageous measures to shut down the greatest thorn in the military's dictatorial side. An American Mormon named John Yettaw gave them the excuse when he was caught spending two days at her house after he swam across the lake to visit her last week. Authorities seized the opportunity to charge the Nobel Peace Prize winner with violating the terms of her house arrest. She and her housekeepers could be jailed for five years (Yettaw himself faces six). On the third day of the “trial” yesterday, the government allowed outsiders observe her in court. Pictures of Suu Kyi in good health appeared on Burmese TV and newspapers. But censorship resumed today and the prospects are not good for the 63 year old woman. Aung San Suu Kyi has now spent 13 of her last 19 years in detention since she won Burma’s last democratic election in 1990.

The irony is that the tatmadaw (Burmese military) was the beloved creation of her father Aung San. He was not just her father; Aung Sun was a war-hero and the father of Burmese independence. The date of his 1947 assassination by political enemies is still preserved as a sombre holiday in Burma. The room in the government building where he was shot is now a shrine.

His aura was used to good effect by the Ne Win military administration after the 1962 army coup. But commemorations have been drastically reduced after the SLORC junta declared his daughter’s NLD party electoral victory invalid in 1990. Since then photos of Aung San have disappeared from public circulation and he is rarely quoted in the press. By downgrading his image, the army also attempted to eliminate the nationalistic identity of his daughter.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born two years before her father’s assassination. Burma became independent from Britain a year after his death. In 1956, the 11 year old girl was enrolled at Rangoon’s Methodist English High School. Here she met children from Burma’s best families and topped her class. In 1960 her mother was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and the family moved to New Delhi where they lived for the next three years. In 1962 General Ne Win launched a coup against the democratic government and Burma began to shut its doors on the rest of the world and descend into poverty.

Safe in India, Suu Kyi studied there until 1964 before enrolling at Oxford to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics and graduated with a BA in 1967. She went to work for the UN in New York before returning to Oxford in 1972 where she married the Himalayan studies academic Michael Aris. They had two sons. Though Burma was never far from her mind, it seemed she would never return there.

Her life was changed forever in March 1988 when she got a phone call to say her mother was ill in Rangoon after a severe stroke. Suu Kyi began to pack at once. Arriving home in April she found life in Burma had changed very much for the worse since she left as a child. The country that used to be the rice basket of Asia now could not feed itself.

A protest movement was growing against the tatmadaw and her status as Aung San’s daughter meant she was a natural focus of opposition attention. In August she addressed a mass rally at Burma’s most prominent shrine, the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. A half million people gathered to hear her speak. She quietly told them she supported multi-party democracy and called for a minute’s silence to honour those who had died in the struggle. She spoke not of vengeance but of reconciliation and healing.

Suu Kyi’s eerie performance electrified the crowd and touched a raw Burmese nerve. Her mother died in December 1988 and huge crowds lined the streets in her honour. When the SLORC surprisingly called an election for 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi was the obvious choice to lead the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). Embolded by the scale of her support, she threw caution to the wind and denounced Ne Win's government. This was the excuse the army needed to lock her up and they placed her under house arrest. She was still in jail when she heard the news she had won the election. It was a landslide, the NPD won 392 of the 485 seats. The army were horrified and renounced the results, There were bland claims that the NPD was manipulated by outlawed Communist parties and interfering foreign embassies.

Having re-established control, the tatmadaw crushed all internal opposition to its political and economic power. They arrested all the opposition leaders and destroyed most of the NLD's political infrastructure. But what they left was Aung San Suu Kyi, she was a powerful figurehead in jail whom the government knew they could not martyr. And foreign media got interested. Aung San Suu Kyi was an attractive, poignant and brave victim ready made for Western media consumption.

But SLORC ignored all appeals from the US and the UN for her release. Scandinavia showed its support for the prisoner by awarding her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The committee said she was “one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades…She has become an important symbol of the struggle against oppression [using] non-violent means to resist a regime characterised by brutality”. Her son Alexander accepted the award in Oslo on her behalf. Though Burmese media ignored the ceremony, most people found out through radio broadcasts from abroad. Demonstrations broke out at the University of Rangoon in support of her, but were ruthlessly suppressed by the government.

In 1995 Suu Kyi was released from house arrest under pressure from Japan which threatened to withhold aid. But if the Burmese government thought that release had bought her compliance, they were drastically mistaken. She quickly reorganised the opposition and held gateside meetings every Sunday outside her house to large crowds. In return, the Burmese media continued its relentless attacks against her. The tatmadaw stymied her attempts to visit local party chapters, occasionally leaving her stranded in the countryside or at Rangoon train station ahead of planned monster meetings.

In 1999, the SLORC (now renamed SPDC) refused a Burmese visa for Suu Kyi’s British husband Michael Aris who was terminally ill with cancer back in Oxford. Because Suu Kyi could not trust the government to let her back in the country if she visited him, she did not see him again before he died. She was re-placed under house arrest between 2000 for another two years, and after twelve months free, they arrested her again in 2003. Since then, the government have found excuses to extend the detention on a yearly basis despite it being against Burmese law to confine someone for five years without a charge.

Just before Yettaw made his fateful swim across the lake last week, Suu Kyi was treated at home for low blood pressure and dehydration. While she was believed to be recovering, she could not get access to her usual doctor who had been detained for questioning. Her subsequent detention in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison could have done little for her health. It is not difficult to believe that Burmese authorities are imposing the equivalent of death sentences by a thousand cuts on one of the world’s most courageous leaders.

Suu Kyi house arrest extended

Aung San Suu Kyi is the world’s most famous political prisoner. She has spent 11 of the past 18 years under house arrest in Rangoon, the capital of Burma. Last month, the country's military rulers decided to extend her house arrest when her confinement order expired on May 27, 2006. May 27 was sixteen years ago to the day when Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a crushing 82 per cent of the vote in a general election, a majority that could not have sent a clearer message to the ruling military junta about what the nation thought of its 28-year dictatorship.

Nonetheless the government have ignored the world and indefinitely extended her detention. This was despite pleas such as the one from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "I'm relying on you, General Than Shwe, to do the right thing," he said, in a direct appeal to the country's senior leader.

Now Annan is saying “despite this setback, the international community cannot abandon the search for improvements in the difficult situation in Myanmar.”

In 1989 the ruling junta renamed the English version of its name from Burma to Myanmar to denote the majority Bamar ethnic group. Myanmar was already the name in Burmese. The West has been slow to embrace the change and organisations such as the BBC and the New York Times still refer to it as Burma.

Burma was a series of independent kingdoms that evolved through the centuries. The Konbaung Dynasty ruled in the 18th and 19th century and fought a series of wars with British India. By the time of the third Anglo-Burmese war in 1885, the British had conquered the whole of the country and turned it into an Indian province. Burma was split from India and set up as a separate colony in 1937. When the Second World War broke out, some leaders such as Aung San (the father of Aung San Suu Kyi) called for a national uprising against the British. He fled to China but fell into Japanese hands. The Japanese offered him support to form the Burmese Independence Army (BIA).

The Japanese invaded Burma in 1942 and they allowed the BIA to form a provisional government. But the Japanese didn’t like how truly independent they were becoming. They disbanded the BIA and replaced it with the Burmese Defence Army still under Aung San. The Japanese trained this army and they appointed Ba Maw as puppet head of state. A disillusioned Aung San formed an anti-Japanese group and they rose up in rebellion in March 1945. The Japanese were routed and left the country in defeat in May. The British reinstalled a governor who convinced the hugely popular Aung Sun to join a ruling council. In 1947 his party won a landslide victory in Burma’s first election. Unfortunately for him, he and six of his newly formed cabinet members were assassinated on the orders of a conservative politician U Saw.

Despite the assassinations, Burma transitioned to become a democratic republic in 1948. The republic lasted until the military coup of 1962. General Ne Win took over. Ne Win was a contemporary of Aung Sun and one of the leaders who travelled to Toyko for wartime training. He cemented his reputation in the 1950s when he put down the Karen rebellion. Having taken power, he dissolved parliament and ruled alone for the next 26 years. In 1990, free elections were held but the landslide victory of the NLD, the party of Aung San’s daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi was voided by the military, which refused to step down.

Aung San Suu Kyi was only 2 years old when her father was killed. She was educated in English Catholic schools for much of her childhood in Burma. Her mother Khin Kyi was appointed as Burmese ambassador to India in 1960, and Suu Kyi followed, graduating in New Delhi in 1964. She then went to Oxford when she got a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1967. She went to work for the UN in New York and married an Englishman, the Tibetan scholar Michael Aris, in 1972. She returned to her native country in 1988 to care for her ailing mother. In that year, the long-time leader General Ne Win stepped down among democracy demonstrations which were violently suppressed. A new military junta took power. Suu Kyi entered politics, influenced by Ghandi’s theories of non-violence. She founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) and was placed under house arrest in 1989. She was offered freedom in exchange for leaving the country but she refused.

The junta called elections in 1990 which the NLD won easily. However the military refused to hand over power which resulted in international outrage. Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights". She was released from house arrest in 1995 but told she would not be allowed back in if she left the country. Her dying husband was not allowed an entry visa. They never saw each other again as he died in an Oxford hospital in 1999. She was repeatedly prevented from meeting with her party supporters, and in September 2000 was again put under house arrest. The UN negotiated for her release in 2002 and she proclaimed "a new dawn for the country". This dawn was short-lived. In May 2003, her entourage was attacked in a remote northern village by a government-sponsored mob that killed and wounded many of her supporters. Suu Kyi fled the scene but was arrested shortly after. She was imprisoned in Yangon and was again placed under house arrest in Yangon after a hysterectomy in September 2003.

The United Nations has continued to lobby Burma for her release. She is the subject of a high-profile international campaign by the US government, dignitaries and such musical artists as U2, REM and Coldplay. Nonetheless she remains imprisoned under the 1975 State Protection Act which grants the government the power to imprison persons for up to five years without a trial.

General Than Shwe remains implacably opposed to her release and with the support of China and the leadership of ASEAN, he is confident his position is strong enough to ride out the international condemnation. Drug money from the Golden Triangle is widely suspected of keeping the Burmese economy afloat. Shwe’s regime has profited from the flow of drugs across the border into Thailand. Most local investment in that country is laundered drug money. Some five-star hotels, many finance houses and a large percentage of all tourist facilities are built by money from druglords.

And while Suu Kyi remains locked up, none of that is likely to change any time soon.