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Myanmar and stonewalled
democracy
By Richard S Ehrlich
BANGKOK - Many Myanmar nationals want US
President George W Bush and the United Nations to invade
Myanmar with warplanes and troops to topple the military
regime, said Myanmar-based Ross Dunkley, the Australian
chief executive officer and managing editor of the
government-censored Myanmar Times.
"The business
community is on the point of collapse" in Myanmar,
prompting desperation and despair after the US enforced
economic sanctions to push the junta into handing power
to a democratically elected administration, Dunkley
said.
The Myanmar Times is the only
English-language weekly allowed to be published in
Myanmar, known as Burma until the ruling junta
officially renamed the country in 1989.
Dunkley's life and work in the capital Yangon,
also known as Rangoon, has given him a unique,
controversial perspective inside the repressive, hermit
nation.
"I live in Yangon and I catch a taxi to
work every day. And I speak to a lot of people randomly
out on the street, and indiscriminately hear opinions
from people who don't know who I am and I don't know who
they are," the Australian publisher said.
"But
one thing is pretty common. They all want George W Bush
and the UN to come into Myanmar with a whole lot of guns
and airplanes and jets and to solve the problem. They
believe that's possible."
Dunkley made the
remarks during a recent news conference and panel
discussion at the Foreign Correspondents Club of
Thailand, billed as "Prospects for Democracy in Burma".
Everyone on the panel agreed that the military
regime in continental Southeast Asia's geographically
biggest nation was in terrible shape.
Dunkley
said that despite strict laws against freedom of the
press, he taught his journalists and editors to perceive
the real situation and report news the best they can.
"I talk to them about ethics, about the law,
about corruption and about what a fucked-up government
this is," the blunt Dunkley said, drawing a burst of
laughter from the audience of journalists, diplomats,
business people, activists and others.
Dunkley
defended his joint venture that produced a newspaper
bleached by censorship and offering sanitized domestic
and international news and photos, and said it was
better than no news at all.
He lashed out at a
respected US-government-financed Myanmar intellectual,
Aung Zaw, who is based in Thailand as editor and
director of The Irrawaddy monthly magazine, which seeks
an end to military rule in his homeland. "I'm not in
Chiang Mai [northern Thailand] like you, Aung Zaw, and
I'm not receiving US$250,000 a year from the US
government," Dunkley said.
Aung Zaw, also on the
panel, became livid at that remark and later insisted
Irrawaddy magazine was paid "only $100,000" last year
from the Washington-based National Endowment for
Democracy (NED), which is funded mostly by the US
Congress through the State Department.
"We take
the money," Aung Zaw replied. "They are not donors. They
are a funding agency, a financial institution who
believe in what [we] do, who believe in [our] values,
who believe in [our] principles, who give [us] money.
"It is all transparent and accountable. They
believe [we] are pushing for a free press, independent
media. That's why they give [us] the money. Nothing
wrong with it," Aung Zaw said. "They never interfere. If
they interfere, I tell them, 'Get lost.' I would never
allow them to come into my office. I don't become a
mouthpiece of anybody."
For the past 10 years,
Irrawaddy magazine has been read by journalists,
scholars and others interested in politics, economics
and culture in Myanmar, which usually forbids
independent investigation of events.
The
military regime is responsible for some of the worst
human-rights violations in the world, according to
London-based Amnesty International, Washington-based
Human Rights Watch, the US State Department and other
monitors.
Despite the frequently acrimonious
tone to the debate, the remarks by the Australian
entrepreneur and the Myanmar intellectual provided a
microcosm of the optimism and difficulty faced by people
grappling with Myanmar's stonewall against democracy.
Critics of the latest US-led sanctions say
Myanmar has already suffered a closed economy for more
than 40 years - because of its own xenophobic
"socialist" policies and various international boycotts.
Locking up Myanmar's businesses did not nudge
the regime to embrace democracy in the past, and does
not appear to be successful now, they said.
Sanctions also kept most Myanmar nationals too
poor to challenge the military, but modernization and
investment could bring new ideas and influences to help
Myanmar evolve toward greater freedom, critics added.
The latest US sanctions made Myanmar's people
"confused, worried and completely disoriented", Dunkley
said.
"Internally, there has been a run on the
banks over the past six months, which the international
press has scarcely reported on, but which has had a
major impact on business," he said.
"There are
no credit cards in the country anymore. There are no
people running loans or overdrafts. Financial
instruments have gone out the window.
"No one is
really using the banking system anymore," Dunkley said.
"Can you imagine ... if you got your paycheck every week
and couldn't put it into the bank, couldn't use your
credit card, you didn't know how to pay your bills?"
Even the regime is being squeezed.
"The
generals are hurting because the generals and their
wives, who are hoarding away hundreds of thousands or
millions of dollars of FEC, Foreign Exchange
Certificates - which is so-called equivalent to $1
[each] - has plunged to 40 percent or 50 percent of its
value. They are in deep trouble," he said.
"The
business community is on the point of collapse. They are
unable to export anymore. And the government has put in
rules and regulations that you cannot import goods
anymore.
"This is dragging the government down
even further to the point where something will crack,"
he predicted.
Dunkley said his four-year-old
newspaper is read by 300,000 people each week.
"We have 49 percent foreign ownership and 51
percent Burmese ownership, and no government money is in
our organization.
"We employ 300 people and we
support their families. And we sell advertising on a
commercial basis like everyone else and we don't make
any profit," the Australian added.
Dunkley said
he received financial "support" from Japan's Sasakawa
Peace Foundation, a non-government organization, but did
not elaborate.
"I wish that I was making a
profit," Dunkley said. "I'm on the bones of my ass."
(Copyright 2003 Richard S Ehrlich.)
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