most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, scored a psychological victory when she helped force the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to ditch her country’s military regime.
Burma, also known as Myanmar, had been anxiously squelching international condemnation of its reported human rights violations — extrajudicial executions, torture and forced labor — while hoping to be the next host of ASEAN, a mostly profit-minded group which wants good relations with the United States, Europe and other trading partners, critics say.
ASEAN includes Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Vietnam, and rotates its chairmanship.
Several of these countries enjoy lucrative investments in Burma, while shrugging off US-led demands to boycott the country in an effort to pressure its unelected military leaders to step down.
NO CHAIR
Suu Kyi’s checkmate against Burma, however, was revealed this summer when ASEAN issued a concluding, 7,600-word "joint communiqué" at its 38th ministerial meeting in Vientiane, Laos, which said:
"We have been informed by our colleague, Foreign Minister U Nyan Win of Myanmar, that the government of Myanmar had decided to relinquish its turn to be the Chair of ASEAN in 2006 because it would want to focus its attention on the ongoing national reconciliation and democratization process."
The face-saving communiqué said, "We also express our sincere appreciation to the government of Myanmar for not allowing its national preoccupation to affect ASEAN’s solidarity and cohesiveness."
Burma’s humiliation at not being able to host the next showcase gathering of its neighbors was apparently partially cloaked by the communiqué’s language, which did not name detained Suu Kyi.
PARIAH STATUS
Behind the scenes, diplomats and analysts said ASEAN did not want to be tainted by Burma’s pariah status and be spurned by Washington, the European Union and other governments because that would make it difficult for ASEAN to clinch deals with the international community.
Burmese officials will now go home and push compliant supporters into writing a new constitution, with loopholes granting immunity to the military against prosecution, according to Burmese dissidents.
When Burma convinces ASEAN it will not embarrass the organization, the country will be allowed to host the next conference.
But Suu Kyi and her limping National League for Democracy (NLD) party have refused to participate in the regime’s "national reconciliation and democratization process" because the new constitution will also allow the military to continue dominating Burma, which is mainland Southeast Asia’s biggest country.
The election "would surely give a majority of seats to the government and its affiliated parties," Thailand’s Nation newspaper noted in a July 27 editorial examining ASEAN’s conundrum.
RECONCILIATION SOURCE
The regime insists Suu Kyi incites violence when she is allowed onto the streets, because her supporters and opponents allegedly indulge in bloody skirmishes. However Christian Freedom International (CFI), a Christian human rights group, believes she could be a source of reconciliation.
“She has also reached out to the predominantly Christian Karen ethnic minority, which has been oppressed by the junta for decades,” CFI President Jim Jacobson told BosNewsLife.
Yet, the government denounces her as “a patsy being sinisterly used by Washington and other foreign powers to infiltrate Burma” and seize its vast natural resources and strategic location.
"Some big powers are putting pressures on the Tatmadaw [military] government with the intention of installation of a puppet government," the regime’s New Light of Myanmar newspaper said on July 5.
"She is a power maniac," it said, denouncing Suu Kyi.
OFFICIALS HOME
But the slender 60-year-old woman, confined under house arrest, ironically helped make Burma’s officials go home from the ASEAN meeting, unable to strut a public stage.
If she had not been languishing under house arrest, then the United States, the European Union and other governments would not have been able to loudly demand her release, and point to her as a popular symbol of Burma’s repression, BosNewsLife established.
And if Suu Kyi had not been staunchly opposing the regime’s bid to write a new constitution and only hold fresh elections after that, Burma’s generals could have already orchestrated their "national reconciliation and democratization process" and not be in trouble with ASEAN.
In the eyes of Washington and the European community, true national reconciliation and democracy can only be achieved with her release and “the rightful placement of her National League for Democracy party in power, in keeping with their 1990 landslide election victory. “
POLITICAL PRISONERS
Burma would also have to release hundreds of other political prisoners, allow a democracy with freedom of the press and other checks and balances, and end its extensive human rights abuses.
As long as the Nobel Peace laureate suffers house arrest, Burma will remain a vulnerable sore spot for ASEAN which the U.S. and Europe can poke at — something ASEAN cannot ignore.
Even if freed, she has vowed to continue her opposition to the regime’s "national reconciliation" scheme, which includes the government’s manipulation of the text of a new constitution, restrictions over the scope of a new election, and a disregard for the 1990 poll results.
Despite being locked away, her highly vocal role in Burma has resulted in a stumbling block for ASEAN, an organization increasingly weary of being tainted by a tyrannical member nation. In January, Mrs. Suu Kyi also scored a victory when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice castigated Burma as an "outpost of tyranny" alongside North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Cuba.
Secretary Rice declined to attend this week’s ASEAN meeting of foreign ministers, and sent an underling, in a move widely seen in Southeast Asia as a "snub". (Award-winning reporter, photojournalist and author Richard S. Ehrlich has covered the world’s hotspots and Asia for 27 years for a variety of media, including as staff correspondent for United Press International from 1978 to 1984, based in Hong Kong and New Delhi. He also co-authored the non-fiction best seller "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" — Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. The book, reviewed by Time magazine and other leading publications, looks beyond the red light of Thailand’s nightlife, and gives a rare insight in the often tragic and difficult relationships between prostitutes and their clients. Ehrlich, who was born in the US and is currently based in Bangkok, received the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Foreign Correspondent’s Award in 1978. He speaks some Mandarin, Hindustani, Urdu, Thai, Spanish and French. Ehrlich can be reached for assignments and/or more information via website: http://www.geocities.com/glossograph/news.html )
