BANGKOK - As Myanmar's reclusive ruling
military junta moves toward more isolationism, its
senior generals are moving to re-establish
something akin to the country's long-abolished
monarchy to shore up their lagging legitimacy. As
the new palace walls go up, the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) has stepped up its
persecution of foreign organizations operating in
the country.
November's mass relocation of
Myanmar's capital 400 kilometers north to Pyinmana
from Yangon was shrouded in secrecy and
caught many observers,
diplomats and regional allies unawares. Civil
servants were given a day's notice of the move,
and thousands of government workers were abruptly
bused with their belongings to the newly built,
mosquito-infested capital city.
At the
time, many viewed the move as a strategic retreat
motivated by fears of a possible US invasion.
Washington officials had repeatedly referred to
the regime as an "outpost of tyranny" because of
its abysmal human-rights record. A siege mentality
definitely motivated the move, but as the dust
settles on Pyinmana, it is apparent that the move
is part of a larger scheme to establish a new sort
of royal order for the country.
Resurrecting royalty Than Shwe,
the SPDC's top general, is systematically
resurrecting the symbols and rituals of Myanmar's
royal history to lend legitimacy to his regime's
right to rule. And there are emerging indications
that he intends to anoint himself as the country's
new monarch - more than 120 years after British
India annexed and dissolved the Awa royal dynasty.
In neighboring Thailand, a widely revered
constitutional monarch has underpinned the
country's transition to democracy - a
constitutional model the generals have no doubt
noted. This year's relatively subdued Army Day
celebrations were held in Pyinmana, which was
christened the "Royal City" on March 27, the same
date the country's liberation army was founded in
1945.
Three golden statues of former
Burmese kings watched over the parade grounds at
the new palace-city, nestled in the same hills
where Myanmar's independence leader General Aung
San - the father of detained opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi - launched his movement against
the Japanese occupation 61 years ago.
"Today, the tatmadaw [armed forces]
and the people are striving together for the
emergence of a democratic state and these are
tasks which need time to be implemented," Than
Shwe, 74, told members of the armed forces last
week on Army Day.
At the same time, it is
also clear that the SPDC has no intentions of
introducing political reform and handing over
power to a civilian government - as it previously
asserted to appease the international community.
Instead, the junta is adopting an increasingly
isolationist strategy to preserve its power and
deflect international pressure to reform its
politics. It recently arrested and sentenced to
prison three local journalists who had
photographed Pyinmana without official permission.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Seri Syed Hamid
Albar cut short a visit to Myanmar last month, a
trip that had already been delayed months by the
junta. Representing the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), he was not able to meet
with Than Shwe or Suu Kyi or to see Pyinmana. His
highest-level meeting was with his Foreign
Ministry counterpart.
Apart from the royal
symbolism, the move to Pyinmana had an important
strategic component, political analysts contend.
By moving to a more central geographic location,
the regime will have better access to the frontier
areas, along the borders with India, China and
Thailand, and be able to exert greater control
over the ethnic rebel groups that have recently
signed tenuous ceasefire pacts and the other armed
groups that are still fighting for autonomy.
"The motive behind the move is to make
sure the military is in a better strategic
position to control the regional commanders, the
ethnic rebel groups in the border areas [and] the
future parliament and combat any possible social
unrest throughout the country," said Win Min, a
Myanmar analyst in exile.
The move also
was apparently designed to head off resistance
from within. "Stuck in Pyinmana, the civil
servants are less likely to be contaminated by the
[critical] public sentiment on the streets of
Rangoon [Yangon]," said a Yangon-based Western
diplomat. "The regime is conscious of the role
government workers played in [the] 1988 [uprising]
when they joined the students and monks on the
streets of the capital calling for democracy."
Aware of the resentment the sudden move
may have galvanized among civil servants and some
soldiers, the government recently announced a
tenfold increase in government salaries to
commence after the Buddhist New Year in mid-April.
But the inflationary pressure from the mass move
is also likely to accentuate the country's
smoldering financial crisis, which has deepened
through the billions of dollars spent building the
new capital.
In 2003, the government moved
to shutter several scandal-ridden banks, leaving
thousands of depositors empty-handed. With the
exchange rate fixed well below black-market rates
and the politically expedient decision to bolster
government salaries at a time state coffers are
depleted, Myanmar's malfunctioning economy is
starting to show some of the glaring financial
distortions seen in Argentina before that
country's fateful economic and social meltdown in
2002.
Expelling the white
faces The move to Pyinmana and the
resurrection of royal symbolism, however, is only
part of Than Shwe's strategy to preserve political
power. The October 2004 purge of the once-powerful
Military Intelligence Service (MIS) saw the
unceremonious fall of former prime minister and
intelligence chief General Khin Nyunt and
thousands of his MIS supporters. Khin Nyunt was
widely viewed as the military officer who most
favored engagement with the international
community, and he was instrumental in Myanmar's
accession into ASEAN in 1997.
Late last
year, Than Shwe told the other top military
leaders that all the "white faces" should be
expelled from the country. He reportedly ordered
that they be replaced either by Myanmar people, or
at the very least by other Asian faces. Since
then, the SPDC's persecution of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies has been
stepped up dramatically.
"We do not need
anyone's help, not the UN, not India or China, nor
ASEAN," he told the United Nations secretary
general's special envoy, Ali Alatas, when they met
in Yangon in August.
In that direction,
authorities recently introduced strict new
guidelines to control the activities of the
international agencies operating in Myanmar,
including the UN. In February, the junta refused
to renew the visa of the country representative
for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Geneva-based
conflict-resolution outfit that played a
behind-the-scenes role in establishing the secret
and eventually failed UN-brokered negotiations
between the SPDC and the opposition National
League for Democracy in 2003.
A special
ministerial committee has recently been
established to oversee the implementation of these
regulations and control the activities headed by
the planning minister, with the interior minister
and foreign minister acting as his deputies.
"This is clearly part of the military
government's overall security strategy to make
sure that it is in total control of the
countryside," said a UN worker formerly based in
Myanmar, requesting anonymity. After the 2004
purge, "army chief Maung Aye was horrified when he
realized that the military headquarters was
totally unaware of how many foreigners and
international organizations were operating in the
country", he said.
The military's top
brass have moved to control international NGO
activities tightly and restrict the UN's
operations. "There has been a concerted effort to
make sure we cannot visit our projects throughout
the country over the past year," said one
international aid worker based in Yangon. There is
also a campaign under way to expel the few
critical international organizations left in the
country.
Last year the International
Organization of Labor (ILO), which has in the past
reported on the junta's use of forced labor, was
inundated with death threats, according to its
officials. This practice ended abruptly after it
was revealed in the international media. No group
was ever arrested or took responsibility for
making the menacing calls.
Thereafter,
however, Than Shwe and his top advisers have
aggressively lobbied the UN to take the
pro-government grassroots organization the Union
Solidarity Development Association (USDA) as its
main local partner - a suggestion UN
representatives in Yangon have strenuously
rejected since it was first mooted more than six
months ago. Negotiations are ongoing and the UN
has encountered increasing difficulties in
conducting its work here.
Some months ago
the authorities told the International Crescent
Red Cross (ICRC) that officials from the USDA and
local community organizations, such as the
National Women's Committee, must accompany them on
their prison visits. The ICRC rejected this out of
hand - as it is international practice for the
independent humanitarian organization to visit
prisoners privately and not reveal information
publicly about the visits.
Since February,
the ICRC has stopped all prison visits and the
future of the respected non-partisan
organization's work in Myanmar is in severe
jeopardy. Already there are reports the situation
for political prisoners in the country's jails has
deteriorated dramatically since the ICRC suspended
its visits. "Beatings of prisoners in Rangoon's
notorious Insein prison have increased since the
Red Cross stopped visiting," said a former
political prisoner with contacts in the prison.
Both the ILO and ICRC notably work in
sensitive areas for the military, especially the
strategic border areas, and Maung Aye reportedly
sees them as a threat to the army's authority.
Both organizations are likely to face increasing
problems and pressure from the ruling junta in the
coming months to withdraw from the country all
together, Yangon-based diplomats say.
There is little to no evidence that
Myanmar's top generals, increasingly desperate -
both economically and politically - have
reconsidered their attitude toward the former
military intelligence officers who once engaged
with the international community but in 2004 were
cashiered out of the army and sentenced to long
jail terms for various charges and offenses.
"Unfortunately Burma's leaders are not
like their Chinese patrons when it comes to those
who lose their position for political reasons,"
said a former diplomat requesting anonymity.
"There is very little chance of Khin Nyunt and his
people rising from the ashes, as Deng Xiaoping did
after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and
taking a significant role in the administration of
the country."
Instead, the junta seems
increasingly content to pull up the drawbridge on
their new palatial capital and withdraw from the
wider world around them.
Larry
Jagan previously covered Myanmar politics for
the BBC. He is currently a freelance journalist
based in Bangkok.
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