The government moves, and gets its rewards
What a difference a year makes
A LULL in Myanmar followed the excitement of secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s historic visit to the country in early December, the first by a senior American official in half a century. Perhaps, some even wondered, this was the point at which the reform process initiated by Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, might come unstuck. Yet from the evidence of the past week, things are on track.
On January 13th the government undertook the biggest yet in a series of releases of political prisoners: 302 according to the authorities, 287 according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), a monitoring group in Thailand. Either way, it was a sizeable number and included many of the democratic opposition’s most prominent figures. Some had spent two decades in jail for their part in the first student uprisings against the military government in 1988. Several, including Nilar Thein, Min Ko Naing and Htay Kywe, were leaders of the “88 Generation movement”. But student revolutionaries were not the only people set free. One surprise was the release from house arrest of Khin Nyunt, the former military junta’s intelligence chief, and prime minister until he was ousted in 2004. All in all, the government’s intentions to move from a military dictatorship to greater pluralism appear sincere.
The release of political prisoners has always been a foremost condition set by the United States before considering restoring full diplomatic relations. These were downgraded in 1988 and then all but broken off in the early 1990s as punishment for the government’s brutal crackdowns on the democratic opposition. America has for some months pledged that releases of political prisoners will be rewarded by carefully calibrated measures to end Myanmar’s isolation, something the government appears to crave. Sure enough, right after the prisoner release, America duly announced it had restored full diplomatic ties. It was, a senior American diplomat says, “a concrete response to a concrete sign of reform on the Burmese side.”
Other countries have been moving too. On January 14th Norway announced that it would end its policy of discouraging investment in Myanmar. Australia is lifting financial and travel restrictions on certain Burmese citizens. More significantly still, France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said that the European Union will respond “positively” to the latest developments. The EU is currently reviewing its sanctions against Myanmar and seems likely to relax them over the next few months.
Mr Juppé is the latest in a string of foreign dignitaries to visit Myanmar in the past few months, another sign of the diplomatic thaw. William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, preceded Mr Juppé by only a few days. These visitors are now given interviews with Mr Thein Sein, and all come away impressed by the seriousness of the government’s attempts to change the country, even if there is still a long way to go. Even one of the regime’s fiercest critics, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the United States Senate, praised Mr Thein Sein as a “genuine reformer” after his own visit to the country this week.
All these worthies meet the de facto leader of the opposition too, Aung San Suu Kyi. That boosts the domestic standing of an already wildly popular figure, key to the country’s political development. Only a year ago Miss Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past two decades under house arrest, was not even allowed to be mentioned in the government-controlled media. Today, her face smiles on magazine covers sold in the streets of the capital, Yangon. The president knows that the Western investment and recognition that he badly wants hang almost entirely on her say-so. Indeed, the next big test of the regime’s will for reform comes with by-elections for parliament in early April. Miss Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, hitherto banned, has been legalised and will contest 40-odd seats. Ms Suu Kyi herself has just declared her candidacy for a seat on the edge of Yangon. Should these elections be deemed credible, and Miss Suu Kyi take up her seat in parliament, more international rewards for the regime will certainly follow.
Yet there is much, much more goodwill that the government needs to show, including over political prisoners. Their remaining numbers, despite the latest release, are no lower than before the “Saffron revolution” and subsequent crackdown in 2007-08. Meanwhile, the army, which ran Burma from 1962 till last year, remains a force largely unto itself, as a look at Myanmar’s tangled ethnic conflicts around the peripheries of the country suggests. These struggles have been a hugely destabilising factor in the country’s history. Here, too, is cause for some optimism. On January 13th the government signed a ceasefire agreement with the Karen National Union. The Karen have been fighting the government ever since the country won independence from the British in 1948, making the conflict the world’s longest-running civil war. It would thus be real progress if the Karen ceasefire led to a durable peace. Everyone acknowledges that if Myanmar really is to recover and prosper again, then these little wars will have to be brought to an end.
Yet, as if to illustrate just how hard this will be, fighting has worsened in Kachin state in the north, a result of an army offensive against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) which has displaced 50,000 people, some fleeing into China. Talks are apparently taking place in China between the KIA and the Burmese government. Even when there are hopeful signs springing up everywhere, a peaceful Myanmar can never be taken for granted.
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