Think Burma Is a Democracy Now? Think Again.

For millions of people in Burma and for supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi around the world, Sunday's election appears to be the fulfillment of their dreams. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) looks to have won a landslide victory, ending more than fifty years of military rule. Democracy has finally arrived. Or has it?

No, Hillary. You Did Not Bring Democracy to Burma.

In December 2011, Hillary Clinton found herself face to face with a former Burmese general named Shwe Mann. Eleven months earlier, Shwe Mann had gone from being the third-highest-ranking official in a brutal military dictatorship to the speaker of the lower house in a democratizing nation. Now, wearing civilian clothes rather than his old green army uniform, he greeted Clinton with a compliment: "We've been studying your country, trying to understand how to run a parliament," he told her. She asked whether he had been reading books or consulting with experts about democracy. "Oh no," he said. "We've been watching West Wing."

Postcard from Burma: An Orwellian Flashback

When I was in Rangoon not long ago, reporting “The Burmese Spring” (available to subscribers), nobody I met seemed more energized by the signs of political change than Burmese reporters. For decades, until Burma’s military dictatorship began to unwind itself last year, local journalists labored under a censorship system that was diligent even by the standards of autocracy: the Ministry of Information Press Scrutiny and Registration Department applied its red pen not only to the news but also to fairy tales and winning lottery numbers and horoscopes. Last year, Burma extended a four-year reign in the world’s top five jailers of the press, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. A newspaper editor once showed me how the censorship system worked. He handed me a four-inch stack of paper, his latest batch of rejections from the censors, each page marked with red-ink circles around offending phrases. A typical cut: a sentence comparing the architecture of the capital, Naypitaw, to architecture in Pyongyang. Also censored: the word “censored.”

Canada suspending Burma sanctions

Canada is suspending its sanctions against Burma in recognition of its moves towards democracy.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says he has seen encouraging steps in Burma, also known as Myanmar, after former political prisoner Aung Sang Suu Kyi won a parliamentary seat in historic elections there earlier this month.

Baird says Canada's sanctions on imports, exports and financial transactions will be suspended, although an embargo will be maintained on sales of arms and military technology.

The minister visited Burma, last month and personally conferred honorary Canadian citizenship on Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate.

Baird also visited Burma's new, reform-minded civilian leadership, and though impressed, said at the time he wanted to wait before easing restrictions on the repressive South Asian country.

Earlier this week, the European Union suspended some sanctions against Burma for a year, but retained an arms embargo.

Original Article
Source: CBC
Author: The Canadian Press

The real reason why Canada is cozying up to Burma’s dictators

Now we know why Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird was so anxious to trek to Burma last month.

Baird showed up in the southeast Asian country ostensibly to argue for human rights and, in particular, to laud the military dictatorship for letting dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters contest seats in Burma’s army-dominated legislature.

But recent rumblings from world capitals confirm that the real reason was the usual one: resources.

Resource-rich Burma is subject to strict economic sanctions by Western countries. Big companies — and particularly big oil companies — are lobbying hard to have those sanctions lifted.

And Canada hopes to have its firms front and centre when the great barbecue begins.

The fact that Burma’s military-backed leaders allowed any opening toward democracy — and that Suu Kyi gave them her imprimatur — offers Western countries the excuse they need to let trade and investment rip.

The United States has already lifted some sanctions against Burma. The Financial Times reports that more will be relaxed soon.

Aung Suu Kyi heading to Burmese parliament

Aung San Suu Kyi's party says she has won a seat in Burma's parliament in today's landmark byelections, setting the stage for the pro-democracy icon to hold public office for the first time.

The victory, if confirmed, would mark a major milestone in the Southeast Asian country, where the military has ruled almost exclusively for a half-century and where the government is now seeking legitimacy and a lifting of Western sanctions.

The victory claim was displayed on a digital signboard above the opposition National League for Democracy's headquarters in Burma's main city, Rangoon.

Earlier, the party said in unofficial figures that Suu Kyi was ahead with 65 per cent of the vote in 82 of her constituency's 129 polling stations.

Sunday's byelections, to fill a few dozen vacant seats in the country's legislature, followed months of surprising reforms by a nominally civilian government that does not relish ceding ground to Suu Kyi. But the leaders of Burma, also known as Myanmar, are making a push to appear more democratic in order to emerge from decades of international isolation that have crippled the economy.

Beware of Becoming Burma's Useful Idiots

When I made my first trip to Burma in 1989, the blood on the streets from a harsh crackdown on student protesters had hardly dried. The climate of fear was so acute that I'd meet with terrified young activists in secret, and evaded government agents pretty much at every turn.

I'd slipped in as a journalist masquerading as a children's book writer. At that time, journalists were banned from the country and the climate of fear and repression was palpable.

Now, as the country appears to be entering a new phase in its relationship with the West, a parade of foreign secretaries -- led by Hillary Clinton and the UK's William Hague -- are assessing whether the Burmese generals have genuine intentions towards long-awaited reform, including allowing the persecuted opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to stand as a bona fide candidate in elections.

The West's sudden rapprochement with Burma (also known as Myanmar) wouldn't be happening without a nod from Suu Kyi, who for many months has been signalling that she welcomed reforms that allows her National League for Democracy (NLD) party to stand for re-elections.

Suu Kyi reminded Clinton -- and no doubt Hague -- that hundreds of political prisoners still remain behind bars. Of the estimated 180,000 inmates in Burmese jails and labour camps, as many as 1,700 are political prisoners.

History shows us that the Burmese generals can be astonishingly brutal and vengeful, not to mention unpredictable and manipulative. Just ask Suu Kyi, who, despite winning a landslide election victory in 1990, was denied official recognition. The Nobel Peace Prize winner's party was never allowed to take power.

Burma's Reality Check

Daunting challenges overshadow the reforms unfolding in a country long acknowledged to be one of the world’s most brutal.

A near-pandemic optimism over the Burmese government’s unprecedented promises of political, economic, and social reform has seized the international community. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent visit started a diplomatic stampede to Burma, with the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Japan, and China soon arriving to smell the air of reform.

But exactly what has happened in Burma to generate such excitement? What can realistically be achieved in a country long acknowledged to be one of the world’s most brutal, repressive states?

Thein Sein, a former general who took off his uniform to front the military-backed civilian government, became president of Burma last March. He came to power after a sham constitutional referendum in 2008, and crudely rigged general elections in November 2010. Under the new constitution, a bicameral national parliament and 14 regional and state assemblies have been formed.

Parliament has sat twice this year, pushing through a number of bills that purportedly guarantee freedom of assembly and the right to form unions, among other things, all of which had previously been imposed by military decree. Government ministers, many of them former generals, have debated issues in these forums. They also now give interviews to domestic and foreign media, face news conferences, and raise issues that have not been discussed in public for a long time, such as corruption, economic development, and ethnic rights.