BAD NEWS FOR BURMA?

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, may be helping to keep the

military regime in power, says Justin Marozzi IS AUNG San Suu Kyi, the beautiful pro- democracy and human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner, bad news for Burma? It is a question the West has pre- ferred not to ask. It is time it did so. The 50th anniversary of the country's indepen- dence, celebrated in hollow fashion last month, provides an opportune moment for reflection.

Burma has suffered under the military junta that seized power in the coup of 1988; of that there can be little doubt. The economy is in a shambles, the kyat fluctu- ates wildly up and down against the dollar, and political freedom is as distant a prospect as ever. Those brave enough to express opposition to the regime are likely to be handed seven-year prison sentences for their pains.

In the face of this thuggish, incompetent and hopelessly corrupt regime, Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of the late General Aung San, architect of the country's inde- pendence from British rule in 1948, has emerged as the tireless and charismatic head of the democracy movement. Despite being placed under house arrest in 1989, she led her National League for Democra- cy to a resounding triumph in the 1990 elections, capturing 392 of the 485 contest- ed seats, only to see the results ignored. Since then she has been separated from her husband and two sons, has been sub- jected to continual harassment and perse- cution and has shown remarkable courage throughout.

That much is uncontroversial. But Burma is also suffering from a striking absence of debate on the methods she is using to improve this dreadful situation. In particular, her call for the international community not to invest in Burma and her discouragement of foreign aid are having profoundly damaging effects on her coun- try. Critically, they are having no dis- cernible effects on the regime beyond increasing its intransigence.

Over lunch in her guarded compound in Rangoon, I asked Aung San Suu Kyi why she was so resolutely opposed to foreign engagement with the regime. In her recently published Letters from Burma, she described businessmen investing in the country as 'passers-by in an orchard roughly stripping off blossoms for their fragile beauty, blind to the ugliness of despoiled branches, oblivious of the fact that by their action they are imperilling future fruitfulness and committing an injustice against the rightful owners of the tree'.

It is a fine picture, but it is one painted by a poetical visionary. Aid is desperately needed for roads, bridges, telecommunica- `Wine gum for the road, Sir?' tions, civil aviation, health and education, but prompted both by the regime's incom- petence and Aung San Suu Kyi, the United States continues to block World Bank and IMF lending to Burma.

The problem, she said, was that 'the economic changes that the SLORC [the ruling body], brought about were not building up a middle class. It just meant that some people got terribly wealthy, and the great majority got poorer'. Economic development is never that simple. In neighbouring Indonesia, one of the world's more obvious kleptocracies, growth has helped create a middle class which is now demanding political change. History would suggest that an economical- ly strong and assertive middle class is a more appropriate ingredient in the recipe for democracy than a poor peasantry.

Historians, moreover, would argue that Burma has been able to withstand isolation from the international community in the past. Ne Win's 'Burmese Way to Socialism' deliberately kept the country isolated for almost three decades from 1962. As with most grandiose socialist experiments in self-sufficiency, it was a dismal failure. It achieved little but mass poverty and the consolidation of military rule.

What, I asked Aung San Suu Kyi, had her movement achieved in the decade since she returned from England to Burma? `We've had our ups and downs, but certain- ly our democracy movement is far better known and supported throughout the world now than it was in 1988,' she replied. In other words, Burma has successfully been established as a pariah state con- signed to economic ruin. As one observer in Rangoon remarked, 'I find it astonishing that anyone can think that by keeping a country poor you advance the cause of democracy. All you do is keep the peasants knee-deep in mud when the country is cry- ing out for industrialisation, modernisation, a manufacturing base and a middle class with economic leverage that will stand up to the government.'

The unpalatable truth about sanctions, particularly hard to digest for those adher- ing to the isolationist approach, is that they offer no magic fix. The example of South Africa, so beloved by those who call for sanctions in Burma, is not conclusive. One could argue that domestic politics played as great a role as external isolation in bringing an end to white rule. Sanctions against Iraq have certainly damaged the regime's ability to wage war, but they have also devastated an entire population without in any way weakening the position of the murderous Saddam Hussein. In Cuba, four decades of a US embargo have merely reinforced the position of Fidel Castro. The bearded revo- lutionary routinely blames the country's eco- nomic morass on his imperialist neighbour.

But with Iraq, a dangerous and recalci- trant regime that the international commu- nity collectively agreed to punish, there is at least a debate on whether sanctions are the correct approach. The Burmese people are owed a similar debate on whether the methods of one opposition leader and some Western governments to prevent for- eign aid and investment are either appro- priate or helpful. But for Western politicians, who prefer certainties to poten- tially intractable problems, showing off on the human rights and democracy platform is easier than acknowledging their limited ability to bring about desired political change overseas. Quite simply, Burma offers them cheap political capital. The country is of no strategic interest and, hav- ing strangled itself by almost three decades of economic isolation, it has few large Western business interests to contend With The limited US sanctions enacted last April were driven by domestic politics. By ensuring they prohibited only new investments, the ban safeguarded Unocal, the only significant American investor in Burma.

What is worrying is that the apparent consensus in the West in favour of isolat- ing Burma is not even reflected in the country itself. There are signs of discon- tent at Aung San Suu Kyi's uncompromis- ing approach. Ma Thanegi is a Pro-democracy and human rights activist who, like Aung San Suu Kyi, has suffered for her political stance against the regime. After campaigning with the NLD leader for ten months in 1989, she spent three years in a seven-by-nine foot cell in the infamous Insein prison in Rangoon. Her quietly spoken call for a new approach to the political situation in Burma is a world away from the nauseatingly self-righteous tone of human rights lobbies in the West, whose ignorance of the effects of the eco- nomic isolation they are advocating is appalling. On the Internet, the Free Burma Coalition proudly announces 'vic- tories' each time an American city agrees to limited sanctions on US companies investing in Burma. Large multinationals like PepsiCo, Texaco, Apple Computer and Heineken have all fled Burma under the threat of consumer backlashes in other markets.

`This sort of naive romanticism angers many of us here in Myanmar,' said Ma Thanegi. 'College students in America play at being "freedom fighters" and politicians stand up in the West and pro- claim they are striking a "blow for democ- racy" with sanctions. But it is we — the real people — who are paying the price of these heroics, Ma Suu's approach has been highly moral, strong-minded and uncompromising, which is why it has caught the imagination of the West. Unfortunately, it comes at a real price for the rest of us. Sanctions have increased tensions with the government and cost people jobs, without accomplishing any- thing positive.' It helps no one to elevate Aung San Suu Kyi onto a pedestal from which she is beyond criticism. Nor is it much use to dis- cuss the issue in hysterical and emotional tones, which tends to be the case with Burma. The Swiss managing director of a tourism company operating in Burma was astonished to receive a letter last year (from an Englishman who professes to be a travel writer) in which he was told, 'You Swiss have no morals whatsoever. You steal and bank gold from murdered Jews and now trade with the fucking SLORC . . . So why don't you sod off and enjoy making your money out of dead Burmese rather than dead Jews?'

Branding the Burmese government as a deeply repugnant regime is the easy part. More challenging is to identify a way for- ward. It is unclear whether discouraging investment will work. Burma may, as many hope, prove to be another South Africa. It is equally debatable whether foreign invest- ment will in time fuel the emergence of a more politically assertive middle class to replace the military junta. There is nothing wrong with such uncertainties, they are part of the political debate. The point, of course, is that there should be one. The jury on Aung San Suu Kyi should still be out.

The author writes for the Financial Times from Manila.