Burma Update

1. Myanmar lawmakers gather for opening of parliament
2. Junta puts more state-owned properties up for sale
3. Bargain basement Burma – if you have friends in high places
4. Kasit to Suu Kyi: no support for dissidents
5. Myanmar faces flak over rights record
6. A parliament, but not as you know it
7. Myanmar hides behind ‘democracy’
8. Total denial in the face of wide
9. End of an era, or beginning of a dynasty?
10. Land confiscation emerges in area under new command
11. US says ‘no’ to lifting sanctions on junta
12. Is Burma finally poised for change?
13. Shwe Man seen as pick to become President
14. Burma’s path to privatization keeps armed forces in economic control
15. A new government for Myanmar (Not)
16. Time to lift economic sanctions
17. Than Shwe threatens Coup d’Etat
18. Political prisoners ‘given amphetamine’
19. Farce follows tragedy in Myanmar
20. Burma names military figures to sit in new parliament
21. Myanmar parties join calls to lift sanctions
22. Myanmar’s Suu Kyi gets Internet access
23. China Unicom set to provide roaming service in Burma
24. Sanctioning sanctions?
25. Rules for parliament released

Yangon, Myanmar – Lawmakers in military-dominated Myanmar have been gathering in the capital of Naypyitaw for the opening of the country’s first parliamentary session in 22 years. The state-run New Light of Myanmar reported Thursday that 435 members of the lower house and 224 of the upper house will attend the opening in a massive new building constructed after the capital was moved from Yangon in 2005.

The legislators will be sworn in on Monday after elections in November that critics decried as a sham meant to perpetuate military rule. Five lower house seats remain empty because voting was canceled in five politically unstable contituencies.

Parliament last met in 1988 in Yangon before a military crackdown on pro- democracy demonstrations installed the current junta.

Burma’s ruling regime has put another 76 state-owned premises and economic enterprises up for sale as it speeds up its privatization drive ahead of the formation of a new government sometime early this year.  

According to reports in state-run newspapers, the sale includes premises belonging to 13 ministries and the offices of the attorney-general and the auditor-general.

An official from the Myanmar Privatization Commission (MPC) told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that the current sale is part of the regime’s ongoing privatization process, but this time does not include any prime properties.

“If you look at most of what is available now, you will see beverage shops, theaters located in the outskirts of town, a sugar factory located outside of Rangoon, and so on. They are still available because no one wanted to buy them before,” said the official.

Many of the buildings are old and abandoned and will likely need to be demolished and rebuilt, he said.

“We don’t know who got all of the best properties or what price they paid for them, but they’re all gone now, so this is more like a clearance sale,” he added.

According to MPC sources, the privatization process, which started in 2008, is now 70 percent complete and will be accelerated in the coming months.

Last year, the regime sold 110 economic enterprises, 32 buildings, 246 gas stations, and jetties along the Rangoon River and in port areas to private companies.

Most of the transferred businesses were acquired by the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, a military-run conglomerate, as well as businessmen with close ties to top generals, including Tay Za of the Htoo Company, Htun Myint Naing (Steven Law) of AsiaWorld, Zaw Zaw of Max Myanmar, Htay Myint of Yuzana, Win Aung of Dagon International, and Khin Shwe of Zaygabar Co Ltd—all of whom are on US and other Western countries’ sanctions lists.

Many other properties have gone to relatives of senior military leaders.

“Father and sons companies are very successful nowadays,” remarked one Rangoon-based business writer.

The regime reportedly plans to transfer 90 percent of state-owned enterprises to the private sector before a new government is formed this year.

Burmese economists dismiss suggestions that this will result in an improved economic climate.

“There will be a change in ownership, but it won’t make a difference unless businessmen are willing to consider the benefit of the people,” said one Rangoon-based economist.  

Up to 90% of Burma’s state-owned industry will be transferred to the private sector. But who will benefit? As an “official” parliament will sit on 31 January for the first time since Burma’s original dictator, Ne Win, abolished the last, more legitimate one in March 1962, Burma’s minister of industry, Khin Maung Kyaw has concocted a bold economic move.

Maung Kyaw told local press earlier this month: “Up to 90% of state-owned industry will be transferred to the private sector as the country makes its transformation to democracy,” adding: “This doesn’t happen only in Myanmar [Burma]; other democratic countries also use the same practice.”

The last sentence is perhaps the most telling and rich with deceit, for few economic schemes anywhere are shrouded in as much secrecy, or lack what the World Bank would term “conditionalities”.

Maung Kyaw is a military man, but one would assume that he knows, as Burmese economist Aung Thu Nyein told the Guardian, the largest recipient of state- owned assets is the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH).  

Which, the economist adds, is a “parastatal” company “run by the military’s quartermaster general”.

So as the official dynamic of Burmese politics shifts and the military changes its clothes, it has not forgotten to empty the pockets first.

As Burmese economist Professor Sean Turnell notes: “This demonstrates how Burma is not a normal developing south-east Asian nation.”

The military, however, will not be the only beneficiaries. In their capacity as power-brokers they have developed a circle of business cronies. Business families who have built empires in the middle of an economy that was once the envy of the region and where now the UNDP estimates that Burma has a GDP in terms of purchasing power parity of around $881, compared with impoverished Cambodia’s $1,619.

Among these cronies, perhaps the most notorious is Lo Hsing Han, a former CIA ally from northern Burma.

Han’s empire was, according to Burma scholar and author, Bertil Lintne, built on heroin. “There is no other way,” the author notes in his seminal work on the drug trade in Burma, Merchants of Madness.

Han’s family owns the Asia World conglomerate, which has taken ownership of lucrative wharves along the crumbling Rangoon riverfront, where the remnants of this colonial city melt into the tropical air and the apathy of military rule.

Their other operations read like a Chinese state shopping list. From giant dams in the foothills of the Himalayas to a pipeline that will traverse the country, carrying Burma’s natural gas to China.  

Such projects will light and power that country’s transformation, while Burma’s cities bathe in a darkness inspired by decades of mismanagement; Asia World are the prescribed sub-contractors.

This bold “privatisation” experiment, however, is not without its discontents, even within the military junta. In true Burmese fashion, a whisper has emerged that the energy minister, Brigadier General Lun Thi is not happy. From under his feet the crucial business of distributing fuel to the populace has been transferred to the junta’s cronies.  

A handful of companies now run some 246 official, privatised filling stations in major cities.  

Turnell points out that fuel prices are always politically sensitive, and were believed to be partly responsible for the popular uprisings in 2007 and 1988. As a result fuel prices were capped at roughly $2.50 a gallon for sale to the public while retailers buy the fuel at roughly $2.30.  

Such margins provide little if any incentive to expand distribution and increase the number of stations in remote areas, resulting in rationing and long queues at official pumps and a flourishing black market petrol priceshave roughly doubled in some areas.

In all probability the companies themselves are involved in the black market, just to make ends meet.  

Lun Thi, it is therefore believed, is waiting for the mess of fuel privatisation to blow up in the faces of the cronies and their military sponsor, Than Shwe, so that Lun Thi can then reclaimthe politically powerful role of fuel distribution.  

Not only is the bidding for ownership of state-owned enterprises a closed process, but there is also a strong likelihood that such cronies would simply be told by the military what to do.

Such a modus operandi was elaborated in a WikiLeak. The cable not only showed the world the general’s desire to buy Manchester United but also speculated that he simply told this gang of businessmen to open football clubs, and in return gave them mining concessions.

While Burma’s state-owned enterprises are in a decrepit state, few apart from the state-run mining partnerships break even, and the natural gas revenues (the country’s most lucrative export) are alleged by the Turnell and others to be held in Singaporean bank accounts to be spent on one of Asia’s largest standing armies and murky weapons programmes.  

And so in the middle of this economic upheaval, little seems to have changed on the streets, where a disgruntled black-market money-changer wades through Burma’s dual exchange rates. He mimes a noose around his neck to describe the economic tragedy of this mineral-rich country.

Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya told Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi that his government supported democratisation and national reconciliation in her country and would not support dissident groups against the Burmese government.

Kasit met Suu Kyi in a Rangoon hotel last Saturday to brief her on the Thai government’s policy toward Burma. Thailand supports a plan to end economic sanctions on Burma, he said.

Also discussed was the situation on the Thai-Burmese border. Kasit said Thailand no longer supported or sheltered any armed dissidents in the border area.  

Thailand wants the Burmese military and ethnic minorities to end armed conflict and sit down together for national reconciliation, Kasit said.

“But Burma has to solve its own problems, and outsiders cannot intervene,” he said. “We will help Burma to gain peace and prosperity.”

Geneva — Myanmar came under pressure in the UN human rights council on Thursday to speed up genuine democratic reform, as Western nations blasted “alarming” abuse and some Asian neighbours sought more change.

“The human rights situation in Myanmar is alarming,” Sweden said in a statement to the 47-nation assembly as the council held its first regular review of Myanmar’s human rights record.

Western countries including Britain, France and the United States called on the military regime to free immediately more than 2,000 political prisoners, end impunity for abuse, and halt forced labour, arbitrary arrests and torture of critics.

US ambassador Eileen Donahoe warned of “ongoing, systematic violations of human rights” and expressed concern about reports of “hundreds of cases of torture of political prisoners.”  

“We remain deeply concerned about the very poor state of human rights,” she added, warning that the elections last November were “neither free nor fair,” and “cannot be considered credible.”

Asian countries broadly welcomed steps towards democracy with the release of jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and steered clear of overt criticism of the administration.

But many neighbouring countries and key members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), including India, Indonesia and Thailand signalled that they also wanted more progress on democratisation and avoided acknowledging the elections.  

“Myanmar stands at an important crossroads in its transition to democracy,” India said in a statement.  

It underlined the need for “more inclusive, broad-based and expeditious” reforms and greater efforts “to address the major human rights concerns.

Thailand sought improvements in the country’s laws to “promote greater accountability” as well as more efforts to engage ethnic groups and deal with human rights.

“We urge the authorities in Myanmar to work to consolidate the gains achieved and ensure further positive developments,” said Thai envoy Kanita Sapphaisal.

However, neighbouring China voiced support for Myanmar and warned that “pressure and sanctions of a political nature will not produce solutions.”

Myanmar told the council it had “reached the final stages of its transition to democracy” with the convening of its new parliament next week.

The elections were “free from vote rigging, violence and any kind of intimidation,” ambassador Wunna Maung Lwin added.

Advocacy group Human Rights Watch described the half-day debate as an opportunity to “put one of the most brutal and intransigent authoritarian systems in the world under the spotlight.”

“Burma’s human rights record remains deplorable, and forming a new parliament after sham elections in 2010 shouldn’t fool anyone,” said HRW’s deputy Asia director Elaine Pearson in a statement.

Singapore – In the sprawling new capital of Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s enormous showcase parliament building awaits its first legislators. After a general election in November, the military government hopes that the opening of the bicameral parliament on January 31st, amid suitable pomp, will appear to usher in a new democratic era. Its first job will be to form an electoral college to choose a fresh president and two vice-presidents.

Also awaiting the legislators will be the new laws and rules governing their conduct, published with rather less fanfare on January 11th and running to 17 bound volumes. These give a better guide to what might be expected of the new parliament than any pronouncements by the regime. According to those who have seen the rules, MPs may not, for example, simply ask a question. They first have to submit the question to the director-general of the lower house ten days before a parliamentary session, after which it will be vetted to ensure that it does not reveal state secrets, trouble international relations, or undermine the “interests” of the state. Should the poor, defenceless question survive that mangle, the speaker of the lower house still has the right to reject it, with no appeal.

Members themselves have been warned not to bring “cameras, radios, cassette players, computers, hand phones, and any kinds of voice-transmission or recording devices” into parliament on opening day. And no citizen should even think of turning up to sample the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate. Without the direct permission of the speaker, such an enormity would warrant at least a year in prison or a hefty fine.  

Both the lower and upper houses will be dominated by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a proxy for the military government. The USDP won an overwhelming majority of seats at the election, in part because of a boycott by the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, released in November from house arrest. The NLD won the previous free election in 1990.

In both houses the USDP has nearly four-fifths of the contested seats. Meanwhile, the army has a reserved quota of a quarter of all seats in both chambers, as well as in the regional state parliaments. A military-controlled parliament therefore has the means to keep dissent to a minimum. The dictator, Than Shwe, could easily win the presidency should he want it. He may, however, prefer to stay in the background and pull strings.  

Parliamentary opposition, such as it is, will come from two sources, the National Democratic Force (NDF) and the so-called ethnic parties, 17 of which won at least one seat, representing Myanmar’s diverse ethnic patchwork. The NDF is made up mostly of former members of the NLD who disagreed with Miss Suu Kyi’s call to boycott the election. They won a mere 16 seats, but have been talking a good game in the run-up to parliament’s opening. Khin Maung Shwe, a senior NDF official, argues that “although we have small numbers, we have a chance to use our voice on behalf of the people.” He says that the NDF will table three motions: an amnesty for political prisoners, a new competition law for business and a new law concerning rights to agricultural land.

Still, given the numerical and procedural odds against it, the opposition will struggle to make headway. Indeed, by taking part in a democratic charade, the NDF might merely provide a figleaf for the dictatorship. As it is, ASEAN, the ten-nation Association of South-East Asian Nations, is using the opening of parliament to argue for the lifting of longstanding Western sanctions on the grounds that the country has reformed itself. Mr Khin Maung Shwe rebuffs his party’s critics, arguing that the NDF is “neither a military puppet nor on a confrontational line”.

More might be expected of the ethnic parties, as they at least have sizeable minorities in the seven state legislatures (out of 14) to which they were elected. Nonetheless, it is certain that the central government will want to keep a tight control over these assemblies too. The state parliaments will not sit in their regional capitals, as you might imagine, but in the parliament building at Naypyidaw.  

The NLD, for its part, dismisses the parliament as a sham. Win Tin, a party official who was jailed for 19 years before being released in 2008, says that “the parliament is nothing. Whether inside parliament or outside, the situation is almost the same. You have no freedom of expression.”  

Instead, Mr Win Tin says, the NLD can act “as a second government”. Although the NLD is still fighting in the courts to regain its legal status as a political party, forfeited because of last year’s election boycott, it realises it needs to be more creative in its opposition. One idea is to use the internet to create a sort of “online parliament”, where issues can be debated among those in opposition, both inside and outside the country. This week Miss Suu Kyi got her first internet connection. She has also been spending a lot of time visiting welfare and other programmes run by her party to try to rebuild it from the grassroots.  

Despite government hopes that parliamentary sittings will sideline Miss Suu Kyi, evidence suggests that she remains as popular in Myanmar as ever. Indeed, the real test of the regime’s claims to be heading in a new democratic direction will come not in parliament but when Ms Suu Kyi tries to travel out of Yangon, taking her message to the rest of the country. That is when the regime has clamped down hard before, forcing Miss Suu Kyi to endure years of house arrest. Will it dare to do so again?

Myanmar’s new “disciplined democracy” doesn’t offer hope for any real democratic change.

As underpaid workmen make their finishing touches on Myanmar’s new parliament building, the junta edges closer to its long-calculated “disciplined democracy”.  

When Than Shwe, the most prominent general, said the phrase during Armed Forces Day last year, shivers were sent down the backs of those inside Myanmar and beyond its borders who have fought long and hard for a “true democracy”.  

Invitations to attend the January 31 opening of parliament have already been sent out to the recently elected MPs. And like everything in a country under the rule of a military regime, the grand event has a long list of rules, starting with a ban on recording devices.

Reading the recently released parliamentary laws, it is easy to gain an understanding of what the despotic leader, Than Shwe, meant by a “disciplined democracy”. Without the consent of “The Speaker”, no member of parliament is allowed to ask any questions during parliamentary sessions. In order to receive permission to ask a question, a letter must be sent 10 days before. The actual question itself is regulated under a law that states each MP must abide by the national cause – not doing so will get the question rejected.

Eighty per cent of the seats have been allocated to the regime-sponsored Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Most appropriately called the “Generals’ Selection”, the recent election involved rampant electoral fraud and intimidation, giving the USDP an easy win.

With such undemocratic principles and an unhealthy future ahead, what are the alternatives and how can Myanmar – also known as Burma – possibly achieve them?  

Looking for change  

Depressingly, the answer is that given the junta’s skillful ushering in of “disciplined democracy”, very little can be achieved in the near future.  

As the MPs scurry into parliament in their traditional dress, realists will see a curtain closing on the pro-democracy movement. Despite the best efforts of countless Burmese dissidents and rebel soldiers, the regime has succeeded in creating Myanmar politics in dictator style.

Optimists, however, won’t see the convening of parliament as the final curtain. Hope for change was recently escalated by the release of National League for Democracy (NLD) leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Despite having spent thirteen of the last nineteen years under house arrest, a large chunk of the Burmese population has retained faith in her ability to save them from poverty and oppression.  

Since her release, she has remained cautious and despite numerous interviews, has said very little. Her party has stated they are willing to review the NLD’s sanctions policy and continue to seek “national reconciliation”. Her courage, bravery and dedication to her people is unwavering.  

But the problem does not lie in her ability or inability; the problem lies in the regime’s somewhat magnificent ability to gain such a grasp on a nation, despite such little public support. As Suu Kyi spent her days confined to her crumbling family mansion, the generals slowly built a new country in a way that not even she can shake from their grip.

Suu Kyi continues to seek dialogue with the generals, but it is very clear they have no intention to speak with her, and nor do they need to. It is obvious they feel confident enough to progress on their road to democracy without her interfering too much.

They have even benefited from her; her calculated release was just one week after the sham elections, just as reports of fraud were trickling out, attention was quickly diverted and pressure eased.

Recently I interviewed an elderly NLD member, who had worked with her for the last twenty years. When asked whether he felt that Suu Kyi now released can really change Burma, he replied, “She can only change the country if she is allowed into politics and given some power … unfortunately the generals will never allow this”.  

She has announced plans to help ethnic leaders coordinate a second Panglong Conference, which her father first held in 1947 between the various ethnics to gain independence from British rule.

While having the potential to bring the ethnics together, the generals would undoubtedly see it as a threat to their reign, and respond by imprisoning Suu Kyi and others involved.

If the generals feel as though Suu Kyi is gaining political momentum in any way, few will be surprised if she is returned to house arrest, as has been done three times before. Even worse, many of her supporters fear that any threat to the regime’s grip on power could ignite fresh plans for an assassination.

It was members of the new government who organised the Depayin Massacre, when intoxicated members of the USDP – formerly the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) – attacked Suu Kyi’s rallying convoy and killed over seventy NLD members.  

For over two decades, activists have hoped for some miraculous event to occur which will topple the regime and allow the NLD to take power.  

However, not only has such an event not happened, Than Shwe and previous leaders before him have only further entrenched an entire system of military rule, continually consolidating power on every front. Now this includes a political wing, the USDP!  

And while the West rightfully convenes meetings on sanctions and discusses UN investigations into the junta’s human rights abuses, Than Shwe and his cronies dig deeper into their cosy, well-lit capital buildings in their jungle hideout, Nay Pyi Daw.  

A dark future

Following the Saffron Revolution, the chances of another uprising are very slim.

The leaders are imprisoned and having seen monks and protesters beaten in the streets, few want to relive the nightmares with once again no rewards.

Others place hope in divisions in the top ranks – potentially spurred on by the threat of UN human rights investigations – but the rewards of being part of the regime are too great, and the willingness of Asian neighbours to confront the generals far too small. As a result it is highly unlikely we will see any military officials standing up to regime leaders any time soon.

Facing heinously undemocratic laws and greatly outnumbered, the pro-democracy MPs who will take their seats in parliament on January 31 offer little hope for dramatic change.

These politicians who made the bold move to participate in the election believe they can nudge gradual change over time – and potentially improve conditions in parliament for the promised 2015 election.

However, it is hard to change a regime that clearly doesn’t want to change. Therefore, it is easy to understand why the exiled activist community cannot accept working with the junta as the “best game in town”.

For many dissidents, working with the junta means accepting defeat, enriching their already wealthy pockets, disrespecting the work of over 2,100 political prisoners who are languishing in Burmese prisons, and allowing sanctions to be lifted in a country where forced relocation and labour is common practise.

But, as the current situation presents itself, even the idealists must ask what other viable choices remain.

As Suu Kyi slowly finds herself once again unable to achieve any solid progress, these few elected MPs who wish to change Burma may be the greatest current hope.

This is not a positive thing; little change can be expected to come from a parliament dominated by the military, which have a particular skill in flushing out nationwide dissent, let alone a few opposition MPs.

Already, these elected MPs have drawn up bills to propose in parliament and recently a statement from five ethnic parties called for a lifting of US- backed sanctions. The statement was later backed up by two other pro- democracy parties: the National Democratic Front (NDF) – a splinter group of the NLD – and the Democratic Party (DP).

Having been elected as MPs, their calls came with some weight and were also joined by ASEAN, though the NLD was yet to finish reviewing their anti- sanctions policy.

Suu Kyi is not the reason sanctions have been placed on the regime. Although obvious, it needs reminding that sanctions are due to the regime’s brutal treatment of pro-democracy forces.

Remove the sanctions?  

Recently, commentators have been saying more focus needs to be put on the regime to change before sanctions can be lifted.  

While that would be ideal, countless groups and countries have been trying for decades, with little progress. It is difficult to change a regime which is delusional to the extent they are convinced they know what is best for Myanmar.

The rewards from lifting sanctions would undoubtedly be enjoyed by the cronies and families of the generals, who have recently inherited all the country’s most valuable assets through rampant overnight privatisation.  

It would also decrease international interest in staunch pro-democracy groups, and strengthen the Burmese military against ethnic armies who struggle for self determination.

It would, however, put the country on a slow and painful climb to a better economy. And while the regime has laid down a complex legal safety net, if they feel secure, then draconian laws will not be enforced, allowing “disciplined democracy” to advance gradually into a more healthy political system.  

For two decades, potential political leaders have languished in dark prisons, ethnic minorities have died in jungle battlefields, and students have bled in the streets to bring democracy to the Burmese people.

Accepting the convening of parliament as the best choice for many is understandably unthinkable, but with the generals having so carefully crafted their precious Republic of the Union of Myanmar, major political change is highly unlikely.  

That is not to say the international community should give up on their dream for a new Burma, free of oppression and poverty. Now more than ever, the regime needs pressuring, and exiled groups need support and direction to create new avenues, which will benefit Burmese society in the long run.  

Most importantly, all groups, both inside and outside Burma, must work together – and with the elected MPs – on both pragmatic as well as “idealistic” approaches, that use past work as lessons to learn from, but are not afraid to re-examine old positions in order to do what is in the best interests of the people.

Whatever good may eventually come out of parliament, the first day it convenes marks the beginning of the junta’s “disciplined democracy”, and will forever be a dark day for the Burmese democracy movement.  

* Alex Ellgee is a freelance journalist based on the Thai-Burma border, focusing on Burmese politics and ethnic issues.  
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPP-B), Arakan Rivers Network (ARN), Burma Fund UN Office, Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC), Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO), Emergency Act Team vs Backpack Health Worker Team, Federation of Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB), Foundation for Education and Development (FED), Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB), Human Rights Foundation of Mon Land (HURFOM), Kachin Women’s Organization Thailand (KWAT), Kaladan Press Bangladesh, Shwe Gas Movement, Women and Child Rights Project (WCRP)Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva examined Burma’s human rights record as part of its first Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Burma’s ruling military regime sent a large delegation to Geneva, led by Deputy Attorney General Dr. Tun Shin, who categorically denied state-orchestrated widespread, systematic and persistent human rights violations against the people of Burma.  

Throughout the three-hour UPR dialogue, States raised numerous concerns, including the issue of political prisoners, treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, and impunity for perpetrators of gross human rights violations that may amount to crimes against humanity. Despite well-documented evidence to the contrary, the Burmese delegation said that, “Accusations of rape against ethnic women are baseless, with the aim of discrediting armed forces.” They claimed, “The armed forces have a zero tolerance policy towards serious human rights violations, including sexual violence,” and that “There is no widespread occurrence of human rights violations with impunity.”  

More than 2,190 people are languishing in Burma’s prisons for peacefully exercising their basic civil and political rights, but the Director General of Prisons Zaw Win said, “They are imprisoned because they have breached prevailing laws, not because of their political beliefs.” He even went as far as to claim that, “There are no prison deaths resulting from torture.” However, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma, a member of the Burma Forum on the Universal Periodic Review (BF-UPR), has documented the deaths of 146 political prisoners in detention since 1988, due to torture and denial of medical treatment.

Representatives of the BF-UPR, a coalition of fourteen human rights and civil society organizations, were in Geneva for the Review.

BF-UPR representative Aung Myo Min said, “The military regime’s dismissal of any criticism of its human rights record and their refusal to even acknowledge the abuses that are taking place underscores the urgent need for an international independent investigation into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Establishing a UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry is an essential first step to ending the culture of impunity and deterring human rights violations.”  

“Despite the claims made in the regime’s National Report to the UPR that the rights to freedom of religion and non-discrimination are guaranteed under law, Burma’s ethnic and religious minorities face ongoing persecution as part of a state policy of forced assimilation,” added BF-UPR representative Salai Ling.

In its National Report, the regime also claimed it is “bringing about balanced development… to enable the national races to enjoy the benefit of development”. BF-UPR representative Paul Sein Twa said, “The right to free, prior and informed consent is denied in Burma, so large-scale development initiatives like dams and extractive projects rarely benefit affected communities. They disrupt local livelihoods, and lead to further impoverishment. In reality such development projects have resulted in gross human rights violations, including mass displacement and forced labour, especially in ethnic areas.”

Meanwhile, it is deeply disappointing that all nine member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chose to commend the regime on its 7 November elections as a positive development while failing to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in eastern Burma as a result of intensified armed conflict since the elections, which has caused thousands of refugees to flee into neighbouring countries. Their expressions of support on the implementation of the 7-Step Roadmap is also of particular concern, as the Roadmap fails to genuinely include all stakeholders in the country, and has resulted in a deeply flawed Constitution that enshrines impunity and fails to meet international human rights norms and standards.

The Burma Forum on the Universal Periodic Review urges the military regime to act now and immediately halt all human rights violations and accept the numerous recommendations made during the Review including: immediately and unconditionally releasing all political prisoners; reforming the judiciary; ratifying and effectively implementing all international human rights treaties; ensuring full rights to ethnic and religious minorities both in law and in practice; and in particular, the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry in line with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar’s recommendation, as proposed by the Czech Republic.

When the new Parliament convenes in Naypyidaw at the end of this month, some say it will be a political transition marking the end of decades of military rule in Burma—at least symbolically. However, the majority of Burmese people view the event as nothing more than an attempt by junta chief Than Shwe to maintain his hold on power and secure the wealth and influence of his close family members and loyalists in the name of “disciplined democracy.”  

Speculation has been rife that the new government will be headed by Than Shwe himself or one of his core loyalists, including Thura Shwe Mann, Tin Aung Myint Oo and Prime Minister Thein Sein.

Whoever becomes either president or vice-president, however, he will be required to declare all of his family assets, including land, houses, businesses, savings and other valuables, to the Parliament, according to the Constitution.

It is doubtful, however, that Than Shwe or his loyalists will ever disclose the full extent of the wealth they have acquired over the past two decades. But as Parliament prepares to convene on Jan. 31, it may be worthwhile to examine some of the evidence of their ill-gotten gains.

In this first in a series of reports, we look at the fortunes of the first family of military-ruled Burma, the Than Shwe clan.  

Burma’s Ali Baba and his Family

It is said that Than Shwe believes himself to be a reincarnation of an ancient Burmese monarch. Whether this rumor is true or not, the junta chief has certainly styled himself in that way, for example by having his wife, children and his favorite grandchild take the most important seats at official ceremonies.

In keeping with this status, Than Shwe and his family have amassed enormous wealth. In part he has done this by treating Burma’s revenues from the sale of oil and natural gas as his own personal fortune. By recording these revenues at the official exchange rate (six kyat to the US dollar, in contrast to the real rate of 815 kyat to the dollar), he and his closest loyalists have been able to keep most of the money earned from the sale of Burma’s resources for themselves.  

Most of this money has ended up in overseas bank accounts. Than Shwe has even assigned former Lt-Gen Tin Aye, one of his closest military loyalists, to manage these bank accounts. He has also reportedly bought several houses in Beijing and Shanghai with these secret funds.

But the Than Shwe clan’s pilfering of wealth is not limited to stealing from the country. Sources in the Ministry of Defense said that when Than Shwe’s wife, Kyaing Kyaing, and daughters make trips to other parts of the country unaccompanied by the senior general, the wives of regional military commanders have to present them with “diamonds, gold and valuable jewelery” on a tray.  

“They take what they like most from the trays and leave the rest. But they never walk away without taking at least 200,000,000 kyat (US$ 245,000) worth of the precious stones and other items,” said a source.  

The first family’s appetite for the finer things in life was already in evidence five years ago, when Than Shwe’s youngest daughter, Thandar Shwe, was showered with diamonds and other expensive gifts at her wedding.

These days, they are more likely to be seen plundering shopping malls. “They just point at any item they desire and the wives of the regional military commanders have to pick up the tab,” said the source.

Following in the tradition of Burmese monarchs, Than Shwe’s family controls the ownership of lucrative hand-dug oil wells in Magwe and Monywa divisions and also gold mines in Kawlin and Wuntho townships in Sagaing Division.

The licenses for operating those oil wells and gold mines have to be obtained from regional commanders. Since the average license fee for an acre of these gold mines or oil wells is 3,000,000 kyat (US 3,680), those working on those sites have to pay nearly one billion kyat ($1.2 million) annually.  

It was Honda Tin Maung in Mandalay, a man often associated with the Chinese business group Great Wall in Burma, who bought licenses for those mines and oil wells.  

Unsatisfied with ownership of several of the finest houses in Naypyidaw and Maymyo, Than Shwe’s family has also controlled state-owned houses and lands in the vicinity of Rangoon’s Inya Lake, alongside which opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi lives.

A few years ago, a residential compound on Pyay Road and near Inya Lake, whose ownership had been disputed in a legal family feud, was given to Khin Than Nwet, the wife of former Lt-Gen Tin Oo, who was killed in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2001.  

When Khin Than Nwet refused to accept it, Kyaing Kyaing, Than Shwe’s wife, asked Tay Za, Burma’s best-known business tycoon, to grab the estate for her.  

In Burma’s business circle, Tay Za is well known as an agent for the business affairs of Than Shwe’s family.  

Than Shwe’s daughters have shares in Tay Za’s hotels in the popular beach resort towns of Chaung Tha and Ngwe Saung in Lower Burma. They are also shareholders in a hospital near Inya Lake named Kantharyar, which was sold off to Tay Za as part of the government’s recent privatization process.

Even Than Shwe’s favorite grandson, Nay Shwe Thwe Aung (nicknamed Pho La Pyae), has recently become a commercial broker. One of his money-making activities is helping companies to clear customs at the country’s ports, enabling them to illegally import goods upon receipt of a “tax” payable directly to him.  

He is also known as a middleman between government ministers and business owners who wish to open new businesses on Rangoon estates. In one notable case, he helped a group of Indian businessmen, called Naing Group, to win permission to work on a large estate next to the Thai embassy in Rangoon, after they were earlier denied a permit by Rangoon’s mayor, Aung Thein Lin. In exchange for Nay Shwe Thwe Aung’s assistance, the Indian businessmen paid him 500,000,000 kyat ($610,000).  

The children and grandchildren of other members of the military elite are also involved in such shady deals, but Nay Shwe Thwe Aung always makes sure that he remains dominant among them. For example, in 2009, he ordered the closure of a coffee shop in Rangoon called “Seven Lekkers,” which was owned by Tay Za Saw Oo, the son of the junta’s fourth-ranking official, Tin Aung Myint Oo.  

It is also known that he ordered his followers to physically beat Win Hlaing Htwe, the son of Gen Win Hlaing, a former director general in the Ministry of Defense, over a a tussle involving an estate in People’s Park near Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon.

On another occasion, he ordered police to arrest one of his former friends for writing something bad about him on Facebook while the latter was studying in a foreign country. In a similar incident in 2009, he was unable to order the arrest of another former friend for writing something negative about him on the Internet because he was studying in Singapore, so he had his ex- friend’s parents arrested.

“Before those arrests were made, a group of men went and threw stones at his friend’s house in Rangoon under orders from Pho La Pyae,” said a source.

When the parents of his friend were brought before him, Nay Shwe Thwe Aung ordered them to kneel down and pay respects to him and ask for his pardon for their son’s wrongdoing to him. Out of fear for their son’s personal safety, the parents did as they were told, sources said.

In another incident last November, a military captain working as the personal assistant of Foreign Minister Nyan Win incurred Nay Shwe Thwe Aung’s wrath by inadvertently blocking his car in front of the office of the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, a business conglomerate controlled by the military. Than Shwe’s grandchild reportedly responded by ordering the officer to stand at attention while he lectured him about the code of conduct for civil officers.

More recently, Aung Thet Mann, the son of the junta’s third-ranking official, Thura Shwe Mann, had to give up an already booked VIP seat on a local Air Bagan flight to Naypyidaw when Nay Shwe Thwe Aung and his followers suddenly appeared on the same plane.  

While Than Shwe’s daughters hold senior positions in foreign embassies (where they reportedly do little more than collect bags of money at the end of the day), his sons, namely Kyaing San Shwe and Tun Naing Shwe, own hotel businesses in Naypyidaw and control gas stations which have mushroomed across the country.  

Tun Naing Shwe is also the owner the J-Donuts, a popular chain of donut shops, and a business partner of Myanmar VES Joint Venture Co, Ltd, a leading gems company.  

“What’s really bizarre is that Than Shwe’s family believe that they’re entitled to everything they’ve got because of their good karma in the past,” said a military source.

Notwithstanding their belief that they are merely enjoying the fruits of their own merit, Than Shwe’s family members have also been careful to guard the real source of their privileges. That is why Kyaing Kyaing urged her husband last year not to retire from the military, and even asked Burmese Buddhist monks in India to talk him into staying in power when the couple made a pilgrimage to Bodhgaya last July.  

Military sources said that Than Shwe is also wary of stepping aside to make way for a new generation of leaders. They say he doesn’t trust top-ranking officials like Tin Aung Myint Oo, and his greatest fear is a fate similar to that of his predecessor, Ne Win, who died under house arrest after his son- in-law and grandsons were accused of plotting against the current regime.

As the author of Ne Win’s eventual downfall, Than Shwe knows only too well how quickly trust can turn to treachery once a dictator begins to lose his grip.

The Burmese people will soon know what role Than Shwe intends to play in the future government, which is expected to be formed by the end of next month. Whatever the outcome, there is no doubt that Than Shwe will always go to great lengths to ensure his own safety and that of his family.

One sign that he is preparing for the worst is a recent report that he has established his own private security company to protect himself and his family. The company, Eagle Security, is headed by Thein Han, a retired colonel who was one of the military officers involved in the junta- orchestrated deadly ambush on Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy in Depayin, Sagaing Division, in 2003.  

Farms and lands of local villagers in Shan State South’s Kunhing Township, have been reportedly confiscated for the use of local authorities under the recently installed regional command, according to local sources.

Totally about 300 acres, originally owned by 40 people in Nawng Ngeun village have been seized. The village is situated northeast of Kali sub- township, Kunhing, on the way to the Shan State Army (SSA)’s 7th Brigade’s Headquarters that accepted the junta-run Border Guard Force (BGF) program.

One acre for uncultivated land was paid Kyat 100,000 (US$ 120) while cultivated land was paid Kyat 200,000 (US$240).

“We knew that it is little money but we could not complain. They [the junta] said they would take it free if we did not satisfy with the amount they pay us,” a local villager in Kali said.  

Local villagers say the lands will be used for military expansion project. They further add that the newly installed “Middle East” regional command’s Headquarters (HQ) will be based at Kali, 8 miles east of Kunhing with the purpose of overseeing areas between Shan State South’s Taunggyi and Shan State East’s Kengtung. One of its battalions is a new formed Infantry Battalion (IB) # 151.  

“They [junta authorities] are going to construct more roads from Kali, Hopang and Mongzang. They are currently constructing their [junta authorities] camps. They have started building their camps, trenches and bunkers since 10 January.”

The Burma Army’s camp constructions have been conducted in Kali and Mongzang of Monghsu township where the SSA North’s First Brigade that spurned the ruling junta’s demand to go along with the BGF program is active.  

Earlier, there were reports that it [the new command’s HQ] would be based at Kholam, 33 miles southwest of Kunhing.

At present, the number of people in the areas has dramatically decreased after hearing that the new command’s HQ will be based at Kali. It is apparent that people, in fear of army recruitments, are trying to flee while others may plan to escape forced labor.  

During these days, hundreds of local residents from Kali, Kunghin and Kesi have fled to the bordering town of Tachilek, opposite Thailand’s Maesai district, while many others have migrated to Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province.  

Previously, Kali was crowded of people and traders as they did not have to pay any taxes because the area was controlled by the SSA’s 7th Brigade- turned-junta’s militia force.

The United States will not consider lifting economic sanctions against Burma unless the country’s military rulers recognize opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party and release political prisoners, according to a senior US diplomat. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Joseph Y. Yun told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that the Burmese regime should hold a dialogue with Suu Kyi, and release the more than 2,000 political prisoners held around the country— preconditions for the US to consider lifting economic sanctions imposed against the Burmese regime for its human rights violations.

His comment came more than a week after the foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and an alliance of five ethnic political parties in Burma called for an end to Western economic sanctions against Burma.  

During their recent meeting in Lombok, Indonesia, the Asean ministers referred to Burma’s controversial parliamentary elections and the release of Suu Kyi as “developments,” which they said the international community should positively respond to.  

In their call for the lifting of Western economic sanctions, Asean foreign ministers voiced all the same requests to the Burmese regime as the US demands, Yun was quoted as saying.

“These are excellent demands from the Asean ministers, and I think the Myanmar authorities should really take them to heart and make them a reality,” Yun said, adding that a positive US response would follow when the Burmese regime complies with the requests from the international community.

Last Friday in Washington, the State Department spokesman, P J Crowley, said that the Obama administration has no plan to lift sanctions as of now, and that its sanctions are specifically targeted against the leaders of the Burmese military junta, its cronies and business groups that support them—and not against the people of Burma.  

“At this point, no,” Crowley told reporters when asked if there is any move to lift the sanctions.

“This is an issue that we regularly discuss with stakeholders—the effectiveness and the impact of our sanctions. Our sanctions are specifically targeted against those most responsible for denying democracy and disregarding human rights in Burma,” Crowley said.

“We have concerns about the people of Burma, but it is the Burmese regime that is fully responsible for the country’s dire economic situation. They are the ones who have institutionalized corruption and they are the ones who have plundered natural resources,” he said.

“We maintain sanctions in order to press authorities to take concrete actions on issues of core concern to the international community, including democratic reform, release of political prisoners, and initiating a genuine dialogue with the democratic opposition and ethnic minority leaders,” Crowley said.  

Yun’s call to the regime for the recognition of Suu Kyi’s NLD came amid her lawyers proceeding with an appeal against last year’s dissolution of the party following its decision not to run in parliamentary elections held on Nov. 7.  

On Monday, the lawyers presented their arguments to the Supreme Court in Naypyidaw, but no decision was made by the court about whether it would hear Suu Kyi’s latest appeal against the disbanding of the party.  

In December, Suu Kyi met with Yun in Rangoon and discussed economic sanctions against Burma.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has initiated a senior-level diplomatic dialogue with the Burmese military leadership while continuing to keep sanctions as an important tool of US policy.

However, the Burmese regime has made no tangible positive response. As the country prepares to convene its first session of Parliament in 22 years at the end of this month, more than 2,000 political prisoners remain behind bars in Burma. The Parliament will be dominated by pro-military lawmakers who won in last year’s controversial polls.

* The Irrawaddy correspondent Lalit K. Jha contributed to this article from Washington.

Were the November elections in Burma really the complete sham that so many in the international community claimed? Outright denunciation is simplistic and ignores the potential for modest but significant change over time – even if the election process, the voting and tabulation of results were seriously flawed.

The seemingly interminable process of formulating a constitution and holding elections in Burma/Myanmar came to a conclusion on Nov. 7, with neither a bang nor a whimper.

The completion of the state-controlled constitution, writing of which began in 1993, was probably speeded up by the “saffron revolution” of monks in the fall of 2007. The constitution and the elections that followed were likely designed, at least in the minds of the military leadership, to restore the legitimacy that had been sacrificed by the state’s brutal repression of the monks – the most important symbol of Burman Buddhist identity. Following a referendum in May 2008, which was approved by a Stalinistic margin of 92.4 percent of ballots cast shortly after Cyclone Nargis devastated the country and killed some 138,000 people, the military finally set the election date, which was no doubt determined astrologically to be auspicious. Within 90 days, a new government will be formed that will inaugurate if not a new era in Burmese political life, at least a more pluralistic form of military control.  

Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the head of state, said in March 2009 that this latest incarnation of military rule, which he awkwardly dubbed “discipline- flourishing democracy,” was like a newly dug well that for a period of time yields muddy water. The tatmadaw (military) will be its filter, he said. The constitutional provisions and the elections ensure that the filter will be very fine indeed.

The constitution provides for a series of legislatures – a central bicameral one and 14 provincial ones, seven in majority Burman areas and seven in minority areas. Twenty-five percent of each legislature will consist of active-duty military personnel appointed by the minister of defense, who also will be a tatmadaw member. The constitution also protects the military from civilian oversight and ensures its leadership in the political process. Many rights are enumerated in the new constitution, but as in so many other constitutions, they are subject to limitations such as law, security, national unity, public morality – in fact, whatever the state wishes. Officials of the previous military government are specifically given immunity from prosecution for any acts committed in their official capacities.  

Despite the limitations, were these elections really the complete sham that the Western media, human rights organizations, the Burmese expatriate community and some foreign governments contend? Outright denunciation is simplistic and ignores the potential for modest but significant change over time – even if the election process, the voting and tabulation of results were seriously flawed, as they were.

These elections are highly significant, no matter how manipulated they were to ensure that the leadership was not embarrassed by the results (as happened in the 1990 elections, the results of which were ignored by the junta). For the first time since the elections for a civilian government in 1960, opposition voices will be heard in the legislatures. Whether they will be freely heard and whether their views will be freely circulated in the media are crucial questions. For the answers to be yes will require transformation of the rigid censorship laws now in effect.

Although 37 parties were registered to run in the elections, the government party – the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) – was paramount, contesting every seat at all levels, with many of the candidates former soldiers. It has been transmogrified from a state-controlled mass organization of 24.5 million people into the elective apparatus of the military. There were also a large number of ethnic parties, both government and opposition. In certain minority areas deemed insecure by the government, no voting was allowed. Registration and election laws were strict, expensive and designed to limit registration. The National League for Democracy (NLD), Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, decided on her recommendation not to register for elections and was legally disbanded, although some members formed a new democratic party, ran, and were labeled “traitors” by some in the NLD leadership. Many former NLD members remain in detention.  

Results of the manipulated election were predictable. The USDP got almost 80 percent of the non-military seats in the legislatures. Together with the seats automatically allocated to the military, this gives the military almost complete control. In six of the seven minority areas, however, the USDP did not achieve such success (30 to 46 percent of the votes) in non-military seats and is in a minority. But, when the 25 percent of members belonging to the military are factored in, there is a majority for the government at all levels.

Before the elections, the US government had determined that they would not be “free, fair and inclusive.” Some had wanted Suu Kyi to be allowed to run for office, but this was impossible under military-decreed regulations. This characterization of the elections was in large part accurate.

At least by March 2009, a private conversation I had in Burma indicated that Suu Kyi would continue to be held under house arrest, as she had been for much of the past two decades, until about the time of the elections so that she could not “disrupt” them. This turned out to be accurate. For many years, the United States, the European Union and other states have called on the government to release her, with the US even calling for “regime change.” Now that she has been released, a new set of questions has arisen. As one US official noted, her release “creates its own issues and challenges” – for her, the state, and for external actors.

Suu Kyi’s strong views on the illegitimacy of the regime (but, significantly, not of the military that her father founded) are well known, but in the days since her release she has been remarkably conciliatory. She even said that personally she did not believe the junta had mistreated her. Yet each time she has been released from house arrest, she has tested the limits of her freedom, and ended up back under house arrest when she seemed to threaten the junta’s power. There are widespread rumors about the personal antipathy toward her by Than Shwe, and even if he assumes no administrative role in the new state apparatus (he is now about 76), his personal influence is likely to be important for a number of years. How the state will deal with her is unknown and highly contentious.  

Her role in the new political configuration is also unclear. She will remain a beacon and avatar of democracy to much of the Western world. It is evident that she still has a vigorous domestic following, though of undetermined strength. Questions remain about how she will deal both with the new government and with renegades from her own party

How will the West react to this new situation? The US has long called for Suu Kyi’s release, but deemed the elections illegitimate. President Barack Obama’s administration has embraced “pragmatic engagement,” a recognition of the need to move away from the “regime change” strategy of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. This has involved high-level diplomatic contacts while retaining economic sanctions -acknowledging US domestic political realities that call for a hard line toward Burma. US policies have largely been determined by the actual or perceived views of Suu Kyi, which have called for sanctions and isolation. Now, however, she has said that she is willing to discuss these issues with the Burmese leadership.

The complexity of the political landscape is compounded by the junta’s ham- handed attempt to force all 17 of the country’s armed minority groups currently in ceasefire agreements with the government to integrate with the national army as “Border Guard Forces,” which would emasculate their capacity for autonomous action. In the far northeastern region near China, the small Kokang force, which rejected integration, was destroyed by the Burmese Army in August 2009. If tensions with minority groups escalate, fighting could break out on the Chinese border that could have international repercussions. China has attempted to mediate these tensions.

In this bleak picture, what potential is there for improving the poor economic, social and political conditions of the diverse populations of this potentially rich land?

The most important is the inauguration of provincial legislatures, even if they are dominated by the military. This is the first time in Burma’s history that elected pluralistic centers of even modest influence may begin to emerge in minority areas. Pro- and anti-state ethnic peoples may find that their concerns about the plight of their own people trump politics, because the minority questions facing the state are the most critical ones, and have never been satisfactorily resolved. Despite constitutional provisions to foster minority cultures since the founding of the modern state, they have been ignored. As a result, minority issues remain explosive.

If the censorship laws are changed and legislative debates can be accurately reported through the media, this will have a profound influence on the future. This will not come about easily, because state censorship has been in effect since 1962.  

It is likely that additional space will be created between the state and the individual, allowing for more freedom. Perhaps a new generation of military leaders will have alternative views, but their education, while more extensive, has been insular and they are said to be highly nationalistic. This opening process is likely to be slow and tortuous, but the political climate in the urban areas seems far more catholic since the failed people’s revolution of 1988.

There are considerable provisions in the new constitution for more freedoms, although circumscribed. An independent judiciary is provided for, although this will be most difficult to achieve. In the country’s period of civilian rule (1948-1962), the judiciary did occasionally find against the state.  

The past year has also seen quiet indicators of a greater awareness of, and interest in, economic reform. With a new economic commission built into the constitution, we may witness at least the beginnings of a more rational approach to the economic plight of the nation.

Finally, the monolithic thinking under the military socialist regime may morph into divergent views between the active duty officer elite and the military-dominated USDP. A similar divergence of views emerged under the Burmese Socialist Political Party government (1974-1988) between party members (including retired military officers) and active duty military. As the new legislatures become established, there is the possibility that there will be divergent views between the tatmadaw in uniform and those in politics, each reflecting their diverse interests.

For the military to step back from its overwhelming influence on Burmese society will require the development of autonomous avenues of social mobility, which are virtually all dominated by the military. This will include the private sector (now effectively controlled by the military and the Chinese), academic and non-profit sectors, and, yes, even politics. More freedom throughout society will be required. This is a consummation devoutly to be wished and toward which much attention and work is needed.

Diplomats regularly remark that they are “cautiously optimistic” about a situation; in the case of Burma, however, one may only be “cautiously pessimistic.”

* David I Steinberg is Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. His Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford), has been translated into Korean.

New Delhi – According to Naypyidaw observers, retired General Thura Shwe Man has the best chance to become the new President in the upcoming Parliament. The military is eligible to nominate a vice president from the appointed military representatives in both houses of Parliament, according to the new constitution, giving Thura Shwe Man an advantage, say observers.

Among the civilian MPs, who are dominated by the Union Solidarity Development Party members of Parliament, the lower house is expected to nominate incumbent Prime Minister Thein Sein for vice president, said another source.

Despite a flurry of recent statements by ethnic parties urging the upper house to nominate an ethnic member of Parliament as vice president, the USDP party is likely to nominate a businessman as vice president, said the source.  

However, in local assemblies in states and regions, ethnic MPs are expected to have a better chance to be elected as chief ministers of the local governments or speakers of local assemblies, observers said.

The USDP dominates both houses of Parliament with 59 percent in the lower house and 57 percent in the upper house. Nominees supported by the USDP will likely become the new president and two vice presidents.  

The most eligible candidate for president will be Thura Shwe Man, who enjoys strong support from the military, said a military source.

Deputy commander in chief of the Armed Forces and No. 2 in the military hierarchy, Vice Senior General Maung Aye, will soon retire and the new mandatory retirement age in the armed forces for top brass, excluding Senior General Than Shwe, will be re-enacted, said the source.  

Even though Lieutenant General Myint Aung and Lieutenant General Ko Ko have been nominated to succeed the commander in chief and the vice commander in chief, the timeline for their official succession has not been announced.

Similarly even senior military officers and military observers cannot say yet which post, if any, Senior General Than Shwe will hold in the future.  

According to general speculation, Than Shwe will retain his current senior general rank and may likely assume additional posts higher than that of commander in chief, or become a patron of the USDP.

A military officer said that the appointed military MPs will sponsor a motion in Parliament to pass a law endorsing the new military conscript law which has been enacted by the junta.

The source said that the key decisions on the division of power in the national and regional Parliaments will be made in the coming days.

The source also said Myint Swe, the winning USDP candidate from Khanaungto Township and a former commander of the Bureau of Special Operations, has been provisionally endorsed as chief minister in the Rangoon area.

Bangkok – Burma’s military is pressing on with the privatization of state assets as part of economic reforms. Many critics say the program simply transfers assets to the military government’s allies and maintains its economic control.

Burma’s is one of Asia’s poorest countries, and the military government dominates the economy.  

But the government is moving forward with economic reforms, including the sale of up to 90 percent of state assets.

While details are sketchy, media reports in Rangoon say more than 400 state- owned assets, including airports, buildings, gasoline stations and land close to the main port have been sold.  

Douglas Clayton, managing director of the investment fund Leopard Capital, based in Cambodia, says privatization is a step toward greater efficiency.  

“Putting an economy into private assets is likely to lead to a better-managed economy,” Clayton said. “It’s a step toward modernizing Burma and no matter how it is done the outcome is likely to be no worse than it is now and possibly much better. There will be many beneficiaries of a liberalized economy, so there will be more impetus for further reform.”

But some Burma experts say privatization is part of the military’s effort to maintain its hold on power. They say most of the assets have gone to business people tied to the military, in an effort to build support before last year’s elections.

Parties close to the military won about 80 percent of the elected seats in November’s elections, the first in 20 years. The constitution additionally sets aside 25 percent of the total seats for the military. The parliament opens next week.

“That whole fire sale of assets that they had prior to the election was to shore up support of some of the big entrepreneurs,” says Alison Vicary, an economist from Australia’s Macquarie University. “The airport, for example, was given to those entrepreneurs that have been aligned with the regime for years. So obviously the regime has some idea that these guys need to be kept onside. How to manage that into the future is another issue.”

Some Burma experts note that the buyers of state assets include military-run corporations such as Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, which controls the army’s pension fund, and the Myanmar Economic Corporation, which oversees funds from the sale of state-owned enterprises.  

“The wave of privatization that has taken place – has been a move to transform public assets into personal property of the military regime and their cronies including the leaders of the Union Solidarity and Development Party which is the biggest party backing the regime,” said Debbie Stothardt, the spokeswoman for rights group Alternative ASEAN Network.  

Bertil Lintner, an author and commentator on Burma, agrees the sell-off leaves much of the economy under military control. But he says it may open the way for private investment.

“People will say look at all these new opportunities here,” said Lintner. “Privately owned companies and organizations – a restructured economy and so on; but also the economy is so bad that they have to do something.”

Peter Gallo, who is with the anti-money laundering consulting firm Pacific Risk in Hong, warns that foreign investors must proceed carefully in Burma, despite the privatization. The United States, the European Union and other governments have imposed economic sanctions against the government to push for political reform.

“The big practical issues really are the rule of law and human rights situation,” Gallo said. “You can have any kind of government you like; doesn’t matter whether it’s allegedly democratically elected or not but if there is flagrant abuse of human rights in the country and that is well known – the international condemnation is going to continue.”

Several large Burmese corporations, such as the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, are on the U.S. sanctions blacklist.

Rights activist Stothardt says the reforms do little to improve life for most Burmese.

“Most people in Burma lack access to clean water basic electricity, to basic health and education,” Stothardt said. “So this whole move to privatize all the assets of the country is mainly to turn public assets into the personal property of military leaders and their cronies, and it’s still not going to improve the situation for the ordinary Burmese person.”

Burmese officials and some regional political analysts say that Western sanctions are responsible for the country’s poverty. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Burma is a member, wants the sanctions lifted.

ASEAN leaders say the elections and the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from detention show Burma is making progress on political reforms. As a result, ASEAN says, the sanctions should go.

But rights groups say the changes fall far short for true reform, especially since Burma’s military holds more than 2,000 political prisoners and maintains a tight grip on the economy.

Burma is back in the news, with the looming opening on Monday of a kangaroo legislature in the isolated capital of Naypyitaw. This is the poisoned fruit of a manipulated election by which the ruling junta of what calls itself Myanmar aimed to buy some rare legitimacy.

The generals followed on their opposition-light vote by granting a relaxation of strictures on Nobel winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the prime symbol of dissent in a sad land. But any real popular resistance seems destined to be crushed anew.  

The New York Times Sunday described the latest video evidence of repression, a documentary about a lapsed member of the 400,000-strong military that tightly rules the country. This follows on an earlier work, Burma VJ, which was nominated for an Oscar award last year. That production used smuggled footage to capture the 2007 Saffron uprising led by Burmese monks. I viewed the film after meeting at a New York reception three of the monks who helped lead that revolt. The trio, who escaped from Burma and reached the U.S., now live in Brooklyn and are trying to maintain their vows while pressing for reforms in their homeland. (An article about them, in the January 2011 issue of First Things magazine, is behind a paywall.)

It is through diligent monitoring and campaigning, mostly by outside non- governmental organizations that furtively keep tabs, that the predations of Burma’s military rulers are kept in the public eye. Certainly officials organizations ranging from the United Nations to the ASEAN group of Southeast Asia nations (which admitted Burma to membership in 1997) have been of limp use in supporting Burmese democrats and ethnic minorities at odds with the generals. Cyclone Nargis in 2008 was a reminder of how useless these bodies have been rendered.

Burma has suffered through nearly 50 years of this brand of dictatorship. An earlier military group seized power in 1962, and resisters have been outflanked or beaten down ever since, particularly in a 1988 uprising and the one followed it (also beginning on Sept. 18) in 2007. In reining in an admittedly splintered populace–with resistance movements that themselves can be violent–the Burmese regime has mixed ruthless muscle with the pretense of democracy.  

It held the bogus elections Nov. 7 to set up the next stage of the tyranny (rumor is that ruling Gen. Than Shwe will appear Monday as president before the new legislature) and, having done that, let Aung San See Kyi free of house arrest in Rangoon. (Her surprise victory in a 1990 vote was what triggered the latest 20 years of harsh order.) How many of her fellow Burmese she can now reach in a society where electronic communication is stifled is anyone’s guess–probably few.

The general case for continued despair over both the plight of the Burmese and the unhelpful actions of outside parties is made in this recent posting by veteran Southeast Asia journalist Bertil Lindner, and buttressed by the latest country report from Human Rights Watch.

For now, the civilized world will simply watch how this ruse plays out, and what part international entities, especially the governments of China and India, play in it.

Sanctions are political tools, and so it is not wrong to consider them from a political point of view. That was what I did in the early 90s, hoping that the imposition of sanctions on the Burmese military government would bring about changes necessary for democratization in our country.

Opposition groups celebrated when the first US sanctions legislation on Burma were imposed in 1997. And I congratulated Kent Wiedemann, the then Chargé d’Affaires of the US embassy in Rangoon, when he told me the good news in Bangkok.

But at the time I did not understand sanctions clearly. Nor did I think about their domestic, geopolitical and economic implications. I just wanted to punish the Burmese military government.

Six years later, I began to have second thoughts. Sanctions were not producing the desired results. Aung San Suu Kyi was back under house arrest following the attack on her motorcade at Depayin in 2003. The possibility of political negotiations—which had existed prior to the attack—was out the window, and the Burmese government had hardened its stance. Then there were more sanctions from the West, pushing the generals toward its eastern neighbors who were not particularly enthusiastic about democratic changes in the country in the same way Western governments expected change from Burma.

As Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, has repeatedly emphasized the need for national reconciliation, it is now time to search for the pathways toward it.

In this regard, I have argued that sanctions are an obstacle to national reconciliation. This is because the sanctions—particularly the visa ban on all the top leaders above brigadier general-level in the Burmese army, as well as their family members—have been designed to punish the entire leadership of an important national institution of the country that democratic leaders are hoping to reconcile with. Sanctions have become a major hindrance to any efforts of trust-building required for the stated goal of reconciliation.

Moreover, sanctions have not only failed to bring about positive political changes in Burma, but have also led the Burmese generals to blame the opposition groups for the country’s serious economic woes—a convenient excuse for the government to try to distract attention from its own grave policy failures. This has further widened the divide between the government and the opposition, adversely affecting the prospects for reconciliation.

I concur with those who have argued that sanctions are not Burma’s main problem. It is no secret who is responsible for Burma’s ills. Burma has experienced a long period of economic stagnation—26 years of an isolated “Socialist economy” and 22 years of “Command economy” since 1962. Under the circumstances, the lifting of sanctions will not lead to any dramatic improvement in Burma’s economy.

However, lifting sanctions are important not only for both political and economic reasons. It is extremely important in a sense that opens the potential for Burma to re-balance its relationship by connecting with the Western world, not only in terms of ending the dependent relationship to her neighbors, but also in restoring much-needed development cooperation.

The latter is much more critical now as numerous civil society groups have emerged in Burma over the last decade in building the communities. They have strengthened the social capital and perhaps even pushed up the process of reconciliation in the bottom-up fashion. They are in dire need of Western help and several sanction regulations have unnecessarily held up Western support for such critical linkages.  

Against this backdrop, several political parties that won seats in the election are now calling for the repeal of sanctions. The latest calls have also come from the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

While it is nothing new that Asean has wanted the sanctions lifted, the call from ethnic and pro-democracy political parties marks a serious political shift. These calls could not have come at a more critical time.

In order to heed their calls, we should approach the question not from a political standpoint but from a perspective of national reconciliation. I say this because sanctions as a tool of “political bargaining” against the Burmese military government have never worked. Put differently, the opposition groups will not get anything meaningful in terms of concessions from the Burmese military government by maintaining sanctions.

As a matter of fact, even the US has conceded that sanctions have not induced positive changes in Burma. Since the Western governments have limited leverage on the regime, the sanctions became less effective. And the regime always has the upper hand in evading the sanctions by trading more with its neighboring countries.  

The election last year is likely to reinforce this trend. A new parliament will be sworn in at the end of January and a new government will be formed soon after that. These factors—even if they are considered to be nominal domestically—will be the key signals for regional economic powers to invest more in Burma. With more foreign investments coming from the region, the chances of effectiveness of sanctions from far-flung places are even slimmer.

Proposed large-scale industrial development projects such as the Dawei Deep Seaport, reported to be worth a staggering US $54 billion, and other investments from within the region are waiting in the wing. Big multinationals are sounding out opinions of their governments’ policy toward Burma in a bid to invest in the country.

So, on a not-so-positive note, but under the circumstances, the situation may even offer only a small window of opportunity or a short period of time to use sanctions as a political or reconciliation tool before any shred of the effectiveness of sanctions is left. And from long-term economic development imperatives, Burma needs the right mix of investments, not just from its neighbors but from the rest of the world.  

Sanctions might have worked if they have been truly multilateral and if Burma and its economy had been dependent on the West, such as in the case of South Africa. But the Burmese economy had very little trade with the West. More importantly, the regime has had friendly neighbors whose trade and investments—mainly in extractive industries, such as oil and gas, timber and mining precious stones, and an array of large-scale development projects—have acted as comfortable cushions against Western sanctions, having hit businesses that may have created more jobs and opportunities for a broader section of people.  

The arguments above are not about justice. Nor are they about gaining ground politically. Nor will lifting sanctions see the justice done; it is about having a reality check and using the currently ineffective sanctions effectively for the sake of opening a possible avenue for national reconciliation.

As such, the call to repeal sanctions may be done as a gesture of goodwill to the nation in the name of reconciliation or in recognition that sanctions have contributed very little to the stated objectives.

* Aung Naing Oo is the Deputy-director of the Vahu Development Institute, an independent organization working on policy research, advocacy and training. The opinions expressed here are his own.

Snr-Gen Than Shwe reportedly reminded military commanders that they must be prepared to launch a coup d’etat if the incoming Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) fails to meet the country’s needs. Military sources told The Irrawaddy that the junta strongman made the remark while chairing the last of his four-monthly meetings with military commanders and government ministers ahead of the opening of Burma’s parliament.  

The sources said that the series of meetings began last week and are continuing. Like previous meetings, Than Shwe and the leading generals from the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) were scheduled to sit with members of the military council and key military commanders of the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces) before a separate meeting with government ministers.

Sources speculate that since these four-monthly meetings are used by Than Shwe to define the power structure within Burma’s military hierarchy, he is expected to take this opportunity to outline the division of power between the two “backbones” of future military rule—the Tatmadaw and the incoming USDP, a proxy political party backed by the junta.

During the meeting with military commanders, Than Shwe reportedly talked about imminent issues such as the new government and parliament, security, state development projects, the responsibilities of the new commanders, tensions with ethnic armed groups, as well as the status of the dissident movement in the wake of the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

A notable comment by Than Shwe at the meeting was to define the Tatmadaw’s role in the coming years within the new parliament, military sources said.

Than Shwe reportedly told his commanders that the Tatmadaw must only work for “the sake of the nation and people,” and not for a particular political party. He reportedly added that the Tatmadaw must be ready to launch a coup d’etat if the USDP “fails to fulfill the nation and the people’s needs.”

“He [Than Shwe] is playing at divide and rule between the lion and the army,” said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the USDP as the lion due to its logo.

Although not represented in such high numbers in parliament as the military and the USDP, the other factor that Than Shwe is counting on is his network of business cronies who have secured and will continue to dominate the country’s economic resources.

Observers said that through the three arms of his power— the military, the USDP and business cronies—Than Shwe believes he can reign indefinitely.

The sources said that ahead of the opening session of parliament on Jan. 31, the talk of the town in the military-ruled nation is who will be chosen as president.

“Some businessmen are betting each other on who will be the president,” said a Rangoon-based businessman. “The money is on either Than Shwe or his close aide, Shwe Mann.”

Political prisoners in Burma are being given amphetamine during interrogation in an effort to extract more information, according to a Thailand-based campaigning group. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPP) had received several complaints of prisoners being drugged by military intelligence in interrogation centres in Rangoon.

Aung Khaing Min from AAPP said that it was likely they were given the stimulant mixed in with their food to avoid detection, but had complained later to visiting family members that believed they had been drugged.

“They [prisoners] are being given it during interrogation to disorientate them so that intelligence can get more details,” Aung Khaing Min said.

The group’s head, Tate Naing, told DVB that if the accusations turned out to be true, Burmese intelligence would be guilty of “committing a serious crime…and they can get serious punishments if they continue to do this”.

The government’s Prison Administration Department was unavailable for comment.

One of those believed to have been given amphetamine is Sithu Zeya, the DVB reporter recently sentenced to eight years in prison after being caught photographing the aftermath of the Rangoon bombings in April last year.

According to AAPP, there are currently 2,189 political prisoners in jails across the country, down from 2203 in December last year after 16 were released.  

“We have a plan to bring the matter of human rights violations in Burma to international rights groups, including the United Nations,” said Tate Naing. “If the situation gets seriously bad, then there must be an investigation in any way possible.”

The UN has been under pressure to launch a probe into whether war crimes and crimes against humanity are occurring in Burma, particular in the ethnic border regions which have hosted decades-long conflicts.

But the issue of Burma’s political prisoners languishing in jails and labour camps across the country has become a focus for rights campaigners, particularly prior to November last year when opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was still under house arrest.

Torture is common among political prisoners, many of whom spend periods in solitary confinement or are sent to remote jails where access for visiting family members is difficult.

BANGKOK – If Karl Marx was right that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, Myanmar may have just entered the farcical phase of its long-running military rule. The first general election held in over 20 years last November and announcement that a new elected National Assembly will be convened on January 31 have not excited many ordinary Myanmar citizens, but have led to wild speculation among foreign pundits about what it all means for the country’s political future.

Many seem to have forgotten that a similar “transition” to “civilian rule” occurred in 1974, following a rigged referendum on a new constitution in 1973. The then ruling junta, the Revolutionary Council, gave way to the military-controlled Burma Socialist.

Program Party, which formed a government made up of retired army officers. The transition in retrospect was a tragedy as it solidified the one-party system that Myanmar, then known as Burma, already had in place and precipitated economic decline in what was previously one of Southeast Asia’s most prosperous countries.

The 1974 constitution guaranteed the military’s grip on power and made its original 1962 military putsch legal. That military-dominated political arrangement lasted until a nationwide uprising for democracy erupted in 1988, which the military crushed through lethal force and in the aftermath reintroduced direct military rule through the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) junta. The SLORC later changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar and rebranded itself as the State Peace and Development Council in 1997.

Now under a new constitution that was adopted after a similarly well- orchestrated referendum in 2008, more than one political party is officially allowed in Myanmar. But the dominance of the military’s new Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) proxy, which swept over 80% of the seats in last November’s rigged polls, is complete. The new charter also reserves 25% of the National Assembly’s seats for the military.

The military is nonetheless taking no chances. On the campaign trail and after the election, candidates and MPs elect have had their freedom of speech severely restricted. Any speech deemed by authorities as a threat to “national security, the unity of the country and the constitution” threaten to land the speaker in prison for up to two years.

In late December, the state-run daily New Light of Myanmar newspaper spelled out the military’s intentions more clearly: the opposition should stop calling for “national reconciliation” and instead support the government to achieve “national reconsolidation”. “Indirect and direct approaches designed to control the ruling government will never come to fruition,” the paper stated.

Despite these restrictions, some foreign analysts are holding out hope for democratic change. Derek Tonkin, a former British ambassador to Thailand, suggested farcically in his newsletter that “the elections, flawed as they are, could provide a catalyst.” For exactly what, however, the former envoy did not make clear.

Priscilla Clapp, a senior American analyst and former Yangon-based US diplomat, seems convinced that an army reshuffle a few months before the election, in which more than 70 senior and many more junior officers retired to have the constitutional right to “contest” the polls will pave the way for a new, presumably more reform-minded, generation of army officers. And with new “civilians” in government, she suggests, change is in the air.

Whether military officers were in or out of uniform made no difference in 1974 – and is even less likely to do so today considering the military’s ironclad grip on power. Nor will a few muted opposition voices in the National Assembly be of any democratic significance. In the old, pre-1988 National Assembly, the official media routinely reported that delegates always “discussed in support of proposals” submitted by the real military rulers of the country.

If any of the handful of non-USDP assemblymen dare to challenge military orders, the authorities have constitutional means to deal with such dissent, including through legal military takeovers. In case of a “national emergency”, clause 413 of the new charter gives the president the right to hand executive as well as judicial power to the commander-in-chief of the defense services, who “may exercise the said powers and duties himself or empower on any suitable military authority” to do the job for him.

The new National Assembly will consist of an Upper House with 168 elected seats and 56 reserved for the military, and a Lower House with 330 elected and 110 military seats. With solid majorities of 129 seats in the Upper House and 259 in the Lower House that the USDP achieved through the rigged November elections, plus the 25% of seats reserved for the military, the new system will ensure in a new legal way the continuation of the old military-ruled order.  

Negligent neighbors

Myanmar’s partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have hailed the election as progress and called on Western nations, including the US, to drop their economic and financial sanctions. At an ASEAN meeting on the Indonesian island of Lombok on January 17, the host country’s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa described the elections as “conducive and transparent” and said that the 10-member bloc would like to see “the immediate or early removal or easing of sanctions that have been applied against Myanmar by some countries.”  

Many ASEAN countries have vested economic interests in Myanmar and through economic engagement policies have over the years undermined the West’s sanctions regime.  

Meanwhile, there is little indication that Myanmar’s military leadership is in much of a democratic mood. At a passing out parade at the Defense Services Technological Academy on December 17, military chief General Than Shwe told the graduates that “you can confront anything and win if you avoid the opponents’ strong points, exploit their shortcomings and strike at their weaknesses.”

The military rank and file has clearly taken that advice to heart. The opposition’s strong point is pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained and barred from participating in the election and released a week after the polls. The weakness of the opposition was its lack of unity: Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, split in half over whether or not it should take part in the election.

Those who favored participation probably now regret it; the new National Democratic Front, set up by former NLD members, won a paltry 16 seats in both houses. Predictably, NDF candidates competed on an unequal playing field. According to several eyewitness reports in several constituencies in Yangon and elsewhere, where a candidate other than the one from the USDP appeared to be winning, boxes of “advance votes” were brought in to prevent such a result. In other places where the USDP seemed to be faring poorly, the vote counting was conducted in secret.  

Opinion is also divided in countries traditionally critical of Myanmar’s rights-abusing regime. In the US, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, once one of Myanmar’s staunchest critics, has flip-flopped to become a staunch advocate of lifting sanctions and engaging the regime. In the European Union, several countries are already doing business with Myanmar despite the sanctions. In its December 14 edition, The Myanmar Times quoted Myint Soe from the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry as saying: “Among the European nations, Germany is one of our largest trading partners, even considering the sanctions.” And sanctions do not cover pre-existing investments in the lucrative oil and gas industry, where France’s Total is a major investor.  

Voices are now being heard in other EU countries, especially among their Bangkok-based envoys, advocating for engagement with the regime based on perceptions that decades of sanctions have failed to achieve democratic change. This argument, or course, fails to take into account that other countries’ engagement policies have similarly failed to achieve positive political change.  

ASEAN has long engaged Myanmar through trade and investment initiatives. However, in a confidential US diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks in December, Singapore’s senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew described Myanmar’s generals as “stupid” and “difficult to deal with”. Dealing with the regime, Lee said, was like “talking to dead people” – a damning assessment of ASEAN’s “constructive engagement” policy from one of the region’s most business- minded leaders.  

Viewed in this light, Myanmar’s initial tragedy of 1974 has turned into the farce of 2010. In effect, the old repressive one-party system has been reintroduced in everything but name. As the new rules guarantee, a few opposition voices will make little difference under the new military dominated dispensation. Even authoritarian-run China and North Korea are formally multi-party states under the leadership of their de facto ruling communists – China has eight parties other than the dominant Communist Party while North Korea allows for three. Such comparisons are more apt than hopeful speculation that Myanmar’s elections and new parliament represent genuine democratic change.  

* Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and the author of several books on Myanmar. He is currently a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services.

65th Armed Forces Day parade, Naypyidaw, Burma, March 27, 2010 Burma’s military is expected to have a dominant role in the new parliament.

Burmese state media has published lists of military officials who will take up seats in parliament when it opens on 31 January for the first time in 22 years.  

Under the junta-drafted constitution, the military is allocated 25% of seats in both houses of parliament and the state assemblies.

Most of the 388 officers appointed hold relatively junior ranks.  

Military-backed parties won by far the largest number of seats in the November polls, Burma’s first in 20 years.

Opposition groups and Western nations have criticised laws under which the polls were held and condemned the elections a sham.

The official first sitting of parliament in Naypyidaw will mark the implementation of the new constitution and see the transfer of power from the military government to a parliament and president.  

Representatives of military-linked parties – many of them former officers who stood down to stand in the polls – are expected the dominate the chambers.

The setting of a quota for the military in parliament has been interpreted by some observers as intended to prevent any surprises. More than 75% approval is required for any constitutional change.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported that 110 military officers had been chosen for the lower house, 56 for the upper house, and 222 for regional and state parliaments.

The most senior appointees were a brigadier general and 19 colonels alongside a majority of majors and captains.

Under the new constitution, parliament will elect a president. It is not yet clear whether senior leader Than Shwe is eyeing this role.

The party that won Burma’s last elections in 1990 – the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy – is not represented in parliament.

But there will also be a small number of lawmakers representing Burma’s ethnic parties and its pro-democracy opposition.

Yangon — Two prominent Myanmar opposition parties Thursday added their voices to calls for Western powers to lift sanctions, as the country prepares for a new parliament after controversial elections.The National Democratic Force (NDF) and the Democratic Party (Myanmar) said the punitive measures were “not beneficial”, echoing calls made by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other, major ethnic parties.  

Khin Maung Swe, a leader of the NDF, said his party had asked the United States to review the sanctions.

“There should not be a determination to impose sanctions to achieve human rights and democracy by neglecting the development of the country and the people,” he said.  

Khin Maung Swe called for the termination of all sanctions, which include penalties imposed by the US, Europe and other Western nations aimed at members of Myanmar’s junta, trade restrictions and other measures.

“Trade and investment sanctions are harming the country and the people, directly or indirectly,” he added.

Democratic Party chairman Thu Wai said his party concurred.

“We have urged all sanctions to be lifted as these are not beneficial for the people,” he said.

Both parties won seats in Myanmar’s controversial election in November.

The NDF, which split from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) to contest the vote, will take 16 seats when parliament and regional legislatures convene on January 31. The Democratic Party has three seats.  

The government-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) claimed an overwhelming majority in the polls, winning 882 out of around 1,160 seats amid allegations of fraud and intimidation, plus the exclusion of democracy icon Suu Kyi.

Five ethnic parties, including the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP), which has 57 seats in the new parliament, issued a declaration on Sunday saying sanctions caused “many difficulties” in ethnic minority regions.

ASEAN, which welcomed the release of Suu Kyi from more than seven years under house arrest in Yangon shortly after the vote, issued a statement on Sunday and said the measures should be reviewed.

Myanmar remains one of the world’s poorest nations following mismanagement by successive military regimes, and some areas have also been wracked by decades of civil conflict between the junta and ethnic rebels.

US President Barack Obama’s administration launched a dialogue with Myanmar’s military rulers in 2009, but it has said it will lift sanctions only in return for progress on democracy and other concerns.

After years of espousing punitive steps against the junta, Suu Kyi has shown signs of softening her stance, writing to junta chief Than Shwe in September 2009 to offer suggestions on getting sanctions against the country lifted.

Observers suggest the views of the Nobel Peace Prize winner are influential.

“If Aung San Suu Kyi comes out and say it, that would be a big push, but she has not said that yet… she wants to study (the issues),” said Dr Tin Maung Maung Than of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Since her release, Suu Kyi has told AFP that she does not see sanctions as a “bargaining chip” to secure concessions from the regime, but she has not publicly spoken on the issue in detail.

Yangon – Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been officially approved to use the Internet at her home in Yangon, her security chief Win Htein told Kyodo News on Thursday. Technicians from Yatanapon Teleport, the state run Internet service provider, set up a broadband connection at her lakeside house on Thursday, Win Htein told Kyodo News by telephone.

Her setup is the latest “McWill” (MULTI Carrier Wireless Local Loop) system broadband wireless mobile Internet recently launched by the ISP and her serial identification for the system is 00001, which means she is the first user granted access to the McWill system, he added.

Asked if Suu Kyi has already tried accessing the Internet, Win Htein said she was feeling unwell with a cough Thursday and has decided to wait until she feels better before testing the new system.  

The democracy icon’s first request for Internet access, made a few weeks after she was released from years of house arrest last year, was initially denied on “technical” grounds, but it was allowed with the advent of the new McWill wireless system.  

The official cost for McWill system access is an initial down payment of 610,000 kyats (about $720 on the black market) and the usage fee is about $0.5 per hour.  

The McWill system is a new broadband mobile Internet access system recently introduced by China, according to technicians in Yangon.

China Unicom, a major state-owned telecommunications operator in China, has signed an agreement with Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT) in Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan Province, to jointly provide GSM international roaming service to China Unicom’s users in Burma, according the China Tech News website. MPT is the only state-owned telecoms company in Burma. Although no details of the agreement have been made available, the agreement would make China Unicom the only operator in China and the first in the world to launch this service in Burma.

There appears to be no end in sight for the Burma sanctions debate: recent appeals by Southeast Asia’s regional bloc and ethnic parties inside Burma to end the blockade have been met with a sharp rebuke from the old guard of Burma’s pro-democracy movement, and observers are feeling a sense of deja vu. Why does the issue remain so divisive, and can the pro-sanctions lobby continue to promote the status quo when any tangible results are so obviously lacking?

Within the polarizing discourse, there is some consensus among both sides that targeted sanctions against key members of the regime should be strengthened – focusing on specific areas, rather than a blanket policy that critics argue is damaging the population. Even the National League for Democracy (NLD), the strongest proponents of a boycott, are conceding that certain areas of the package, such as the trade ban, may need to be reviewed if indeed they are hurting Burmese people.

Most scholars believe that sanctions require three factors in order to succeed: multilateral coordination, incentives (such as a lifting of the visa ban on the generals as a reward for releasing political prisoners), and some degree of domestic opposition to the targets as a means to supplement the pressure.

Their usage has increased dramatically since the Cold War – prior to this, the two prominent cases were Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and South Africa, the casue célèbre of sanctions, which became a key factor in the ending of apartheid. Since 1989, their use by the US in particular has been widespread – against political leaders, drug lords, and terrorists – but their impact limited. In cases like Sudan, Somalia, and of course Burma, they are deemed a failure.  

Most Western governments imposed an arms embargo on Burma and suspended defense cooperation following the bloody 1988 uprising. Even Japan initially ceased providing aid. But countries such as China, Korea and the Burma’s regional neighbours in ASEAN rushed in to do business with the generals.

Fast-forward several years, and the junta’s refusal to recognize the NLD as the winners of the 1990 elections caused the US to widen its boycott. In July 1995, the Free Burma Act was introduced which included a ban on US companies doing business with the Burmese generals, as well as a prohibition on imports of Burmese goods and travel restrictions on the junta leaders to and from Burma. Some scholars believed that the act was sufficient to persuade the regime to release Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest in July 1995.

The following year, the Danish consul to Burma, James Leander Nichols, was sentenced to three year in jail for the illegal possession of a printer. Two months into his sentence, he died. Despite insistence from family members and Danish authorities, the regime refused to carry out an independent autopsy. Soon after this, the European Council took its first Common Position on Burma, introducing a visa ban on members of the military regime and their families. It also suspended all high-level governmental visits to Burma.

After the 2003 Depayin massacre when pro-regime thugs ambushed Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters, killing 70, the US imposed the Burma Freedom and Democracy Act banning imports such as teak and gems. The Act also limited financial transactions and extended visa restrictions on government officials.

Major crises in Burma have often preempted the toughening of sanctions: Washington did not pass the 2008 JADE Act until the September 2007 crackdown on peaceful demonstrations led by Buddhist monks. Such incidents have not however triggered policy decisions in the ASEAN neighbourhood, where continued investment in Burma provides an economic crutch for the regime in the face of a Western embargo.  

ASEAN’s argument is that sanctions will further drive Burma towards isolation or into the hands of China at a time when economic engagement with the West will spur progress in one of the world’s least developed countries. Some have their doubts, however, claiming that ASEAN countries are concerned first and foremost with their own highly lucrative investments in the country, particularly in the energy sector. The regime uses the substantial capital gained from sales of natural gas ($US2.6 billion in sales to Thailand in 2007/08 alone) and electricity to fund its ever-expanding army, spending billions on building underground tunnels, buying Russian MG-29 fighters jet and attempting to produce advanced missiles – all despite the sanctions from the U.S. and EU.  

But, of course, there are detractors in every department, and a vocal school of thought asserts that trade will eventually be the main factor in spurring political reform and lessening the rich-poor divide, such as happened in Taiwan and South Korea. They also argue that the generals will be forced to improve the business environment before hoping to attract Western investment, something that could have a knock-on effect on the overall human rights situation for Burmese citizens.

This is perhaps unlikely, however – as long as the current regime stays in power and retains its myopic focus on itself and its military, then reform through trade remains a distant prospect. Sanctions aren’t responsible for endemic poverty in Burma; gross economic mismanagement is, and without any clear sign that the generals have the intention to improve the wellbeing of Burmese, then the lifting of the blockade may be fruitless.

But careful review of areas that are problematic for Burmese, as well as tightening restrictions that affect those in power, will be a welcome step. The banking sector, for example, is largely owned by businessmen close to the regime, and distrust of the financial system in Burma is so acute that citizens rarely use banks – this is one area where stronger sanctions could start to hurt the generals and not your average Burmese, and it’s this kind of fresh tactical thinking which is what the sanctions debate desperately needs.

The 1000-plus MPs preparing for the first session of parliament on 31 January have been carefully instructed in what to wear, and what not to bring. An invitation sent out to the men and women who won seats in Burma’s elections last November calls on MPs to report to the parliament office in the secretive capital Naypyidaw by 27 January.  

Despite the overwhelming victory of the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), politicians from 22 parties, as well as several independent candidates, will travel to Naypyidaw next week in lieu of the first seating.

“Materials banned from being brought into the parliament premises include cameras, radios, cassette players, computers, hand phones, any kind of voice transmission or recording devices, ammunitions and explosives, bags, shoulder bags and Gaung Baung boxes [for carrying the traditional Burmese turban],” said Dr Myat Nyarna Soe, an MP-elect from the National Democratic Force (NDF).  

On 28 January the MPs will be issued with certificates by the Union Election Commission to recognise them as MPs, as well as MP identification cards, summarised personal biographies and law books.

Dr Myat Nyarna Soe said that strict dress codes had also been issued for men and women. Men will wear a “stiff-collar shirt, appropriate type of longyi, [Burmese] jacket and the Gaung Baung [turban]”, while women are required to wear long-sleeved jackets and a scarf.

“Ethnic [MPs] can wear their own traditional attires and the Tatmadaw [army] members are to wear the dress appointed by the Ministry of Defence.”

A quarter of parliamentary seats automatically went to pre-appointed military officials prior to the vote. They will be involved in the election of a parliamentary head – one of the top items on the agenda for the first session – as well as the election of a president and three vice presidents.  

Critics claim that the presence of the military alongside the 80 percent of elected seats won by the USDP, which is backed by the ruling junta, means that prospects of a true civilian government are unlikely.

No word has yet been given on what role the ageing junta chief Than Shwe will play. Several of his senior military colleagues resigned their posts prior to the elections in order to compete.

Dr Myat Nyarna Soe predicted the first session may last between two and four weeks – the two-chamber Union Parliament will meet in Naypyidaw at the same time the various regional legislatures convene around the country.