Zoya Phan
In August, hundreds of people started peaceful protests on the streets of Burma demanding freedom and democracy. Over a hundred of these brave, peaceful protestors have been violently arrested by the ruling military dictatorship, and most remain in detention. The regime has accused the peaceful protestors of involvement in terrorism, and is threatening jail terms of up to 20 years.
Those arrested face torture, including beatings, electric shocks, burning, and the ‘iron rod’ where a rod is run up and down on the shins until the skin and flesh are removed and the rod is grinding on bone. The Burma protests were sparked by increases in fuel prices of up to 500 percent imposed by the Burmese regime. Despite this brutal crackdown in Burma, once again the international community and the UK government has taken no concrete action but only offered empty words.
Following the dictatorship's attempts to crack down on peaceful protests, Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague was not impressed by the statement released by the Foreign Office Minister Meg Munn. He said, “we believe a more proactive response is required. Burma’s military regime has shown what it is capable of numerous times. It is guilty of crimes against humanity and extreme brutality. A wait-and-see approach is completely inadequate and by failing to act, we may be sleepwalking into another massacre. We must increase pressure on the regime through the UN Security Council and the European Union, and urge China, India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to use their influence to stop the crackdown.”
The regime literally gets away with murder because every time they commit atrocities we see the same limp reaction from the international community.
Burma is ruled by one of the world’s most brutal military dictatorships and charged by the United Nations with a crime against humanity for its systematic violation of human rights against their own people. The regime’s policy of ethnic cleansing have forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee to neighbouring countries and many are displaced within the country. Decades of military rule have reduced Burma to being one of the poorest countries in the world, despite being rich in natural resources. The dictatorship spends half its budget on arms, and less than 60p per person per year on health and education.
Contrary to common belief, there are no effective sanctions against the Burmese regime. The USA is the only country that has taken effective action, banning investment, trade imports and financial transactions. In Europe, EU members are committed to a common foreign policy on Burma. In theory, this could be highly effective, with all 27 EU members working together to help bring democratic reform in Burma. In fact, we are left with the lowest common denominator, and a weak and ineffective response that has had no impact on the regime. In the EU, it only takes one country to say no for nothing to happen.
The EU is divided on how to deal with Burma. A handful of countries, UK, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark, favour increasing pressure to various degrees. A handful of countries have opposed increasing pressure, and some even favour reducing existing measures taken by the EU. These are France, Germany, Austria, Spain and Poland. France’s opposition is attributed to the fact that Total Oil, France’s largest company, is a big investor in Burma. France has, however, supported proposals for a non-punitive resolution on Burma at the United Nations Security Council.
The British government has traditionally been one of the strongest advocates for change in Burma, and we very much appreciated that support. However, since the UN Security Council veto of the Burma resolution in January, there does not seem to be much energy or direction in Britain’s approach to this issue. Earlier this year, for the first time in many years, Britain failed to make any significant effort to strengthen the EU Common Position on Burma. The government has also failed to take action, despite previous assurances, when two British Virgin Island registered companies made new investments in Burma. Nor did the government throw its weight behind efforts at the International Labour Organisation to refer Burma to the International Court of Justice.
While the EU and the UK dither, abuses in Burma get worse. The regime’s ethnic cleansing policy allows them to burn villages and crops, and employ villagers as porters and landmine sweepers. In early 1995, as an ethnic Karen, I was forced to leave my country, as my village was under attack by the regime’s troops. We fled to the jungle to escape the abuses of the military regime. Eventually we ended up in refugee camps in Thailand.
Burma has been accused by the UN of being in breach of the Geneva Convention for deliberately targeting civilians in its war against ethnic minorities. More than 3,000 villages in eastern Burma have been destroyed by the regime in the past ten years – equivalent to one every week. In the past 10 days more than a thousand people have been forced from their homes by a new military offensive. The regime also uses rape as a weapon of war, even against children as young as five. Today, people in eastern Burma, where I am from, have the worst malaria rates in the world, far worse than Burma’s official figures, already amongst the bottom amongst all ASEAN countries. The poverty is equivalent to the poorest conflict hit countries of Africa.
The Burmese military has expanded its abuses against civilians and last year the military offensive in the eastern part of Burma forced 80,000 people from their homes. Many found their way to the Thai border but thousands more are being hunted in the jungle, without basic food, medicine or shelter. The Burma Army have been pushing innocent villagers into forced relocation camps, kidnapping people for forced labour, burning and stealing food stocks, shooting and killing indiscriminately, raping, torturing, and laying landmines.
The regime prohibits humanitarian aid, yet these are the areas where the heart of Burma’s humanitarian crisis is unfolding. It is essential that the UK increases its support. How can the international community stand by when women and children are shot, villages are destroyed and girls are raped?
It is not just me who think this. In July, The International Development Committee (IDC) produced a report on British aid to Burma, which strongly condemned current British aid policy on Burma and called for fundamental change. It said, the UK government must not allow its aid to be blocked by the regime in ethnic areas and must quadruple aid to Burma by 2013, taking aid from ?8.8m to ?35.3m a year. The IDC also called on the government to provide cross-border aid in addition to incountry aid, and to ensure aid reaches internally displaced people who cannot be reached through in-country mechanisms because of restrictions imposed by the regime. It insisted that the UK government starts funding projects that promote human rights and democracy, including exile based organizations?
The IDC were backing argument that we have been making for years. DFID could play a crucial role in alleviating poverty in Burma and tackling the root causes of that poverty, the regime. At the present time, DFID is not doing enough, given the scale of the humanitarian and human rights crisis in Burma. Therefore, the British government must ensure aid reaches those most in need, and if the regime blocks aid to people because of their ethnicity, then others ways to deliver aid must be found, such as delivering aid cross-border from neighbouring countries. At the same time, governments must take a stance on the human rights abuses by the military.
In response to the recent new wave of repression in Burma, it is shameful that the British government has not taken any concrete action. The British government should be calling for discussion at the UN Security Council, and by the EU, and conside ring strengthening unilateral sanctions. Instead they seem to have adopted a wait and see attitude. How many more people will have to be arrested and tortured before the UK decides to act?
The regime literally gets away with murder because every time they commit atrocities we see the same limp reaction from the international community. The regime launches a new wave of repression, the British government and others condemn them for it, but then fail to follow through with any concrete action. The British government appears to have no strategy, the EU certainly has no strategy, and the UN envoy to Burma, instead of rushing there at this time of crisis, seems to have gone into hiding.
The UK government must ask itself the question, is it doing everything it can? The answer is no. Is that an acceptable answer as people in Burma are risking their lives and liberty for freedom? The tragedy is, despite the failure of the British government to act, it is still one of the democracy movement’s strongest supporters.