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2 China
seeks copper firewall in
Myanmar By Peter Lee
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is
attempting to establish a modus vivendi with the
new political order in Myanmar. With the violent
government crackdown on demonstrators at a copper
mine-site at Monywa, in northwestern Myanmar, on
November 29, things just got considerably more
difficult.
Postponement of the
China-backed Myitsone dam project was the price
tag for the entry of Prime Minister Thein Sein
into the good graces of the West. The PRC has, for
the time being, not made a fuss but would clearly
prefer that Myitsone was the only big-ticket
Chinese project that took a bullet for the sake of
Myanmar's rebalanced foreign policy.
The
PRC is hoping to shield its projects - such as the copper
mine and a twin-pipeline
project crossing from the Bay of Bengal to China's
Yunnan province - through belated hearts and minds
outreach to the public in Myanmar (also known as
Burma), and serious jawboning and arm-twisting in
the halls of government. The current government
leadership in Myanmar and, to a certain extent,
Aung San Suu Kyi, seem on board, at least for the
time being. However, widespread resentment of
government oppression and Chinese economic
exploitation is driving Myanmar's politics,
possibly further and faster than the national
elite prefers.
The PRC has to worry that
the Myanmarese
democracy-and-national-reconciliation express, now
chugging determinedly to 2015 elections for a
parliament that is supposed to be 65%
free-and-fair elected and 35% appointed military
officers, will not hop the tracks to administer
revolutionary justice to Myanmar's generals for
widespread human rights violations and corruptly
selling out Myanmar's wealth to the Chinese,
putting paid to China's economic interests in the
process.
Under these circumstances, the
last thing Beijing needed was for Myanmar's
present government to be seen brutalizing monks
and students in order to protect the interests of
the Myanmarese and Chinese military in a polluting
copper mine.
China's participation in the
mine is relatively recent, dating back only to
2010 However, the mine has been in the crosshairs
of domestic and overseas Myanmar democracy
activists for years. The original investment in
the mine came from a Canadian mine developer,
Ivanhoe, which was targeted for its alleged
willingness to ignore international sanctions and
serve as an economic prop of the military junta.
Even Ivanhoe's efforts to divest itself of
the mine came in for criticism as it kicked its
interest back to Myanmar's government to sell
(instead of selling it to the PRC directly),
thereby apparently giving the generals a second
chance to secure graft on the deal.
The
fact that the mine is a joint venture of the
commercial arm of Myanmar's military - the Union
of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL) - and
Wanbao Mining Ltd, a subsidiary of China's main
arms manufacturer, NORINCO - added to the shadow
over the project.
Copper mines, which
generate sulfuric acid in order to reduce the ore
to metal, are not the cleanest, most
environmentally friendly industrial facilities at
the best of times and it is safe to assume that
Monywa is not the best, cleanest, or most
environmentally friendly of copper mines.
Pollution from the mine has been blamed for
infertile cropland, tainted groundwater, and birth
defects.
Therefore, it is not too
surprising that, when the operators started
expanding mining operations to a new site,
Letpadaung, local and national activists converged
in September to set up camps at the gates of the
project and demand its closure. Members of the
Generation 88 student activist group inserted
themselves as mediator/advocates and the
demonstrations grew and achieved national
prominence.
The international NGO
community also piled on, playing up the
environmental destruction angle:
The Chindwin River is a major
tributary of the Irrawaddy River and runs by
misty-blue mountains and charming villages while
passing through a region of abundant natural
resources and fertile meadows.
"The
river runs through intact forests in both the
Tamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary and the Hugawng
Valley Tiger Reserve, the largest tiger reserve
in the world. It sustains vital habitats for a
wide array of wildlife, including globally
endangered species, tigers, elephants and the
endemic Burmese Roof Turtle," says the Burma
Rivers Network NGO. [1]
Though willing
to pay lip service to addressing local and
activist concerns, the government was apparently
not of a mind to let the mine serve as another
area of Sino-Myanmar friction and decided to clear
out the several hundred protesters on the grounds
that their encampments illegal and unapproved.
Instead of efficiently evicting some
rabble-rousing monks and strident students and
wiping the slate clean for a fresh reconsideration
of the project and the fortunes of the Burmese
Roof Turtle by the new, more pro-Western,
pro-business political grouping, fiasco ensued.
It has not yet been determined what
happened on November 29, but something incendiary
somehow got involved - perhaps flares, hot
tear-gas projectiles, or some unknown weapon - and
several dozen people suffered serious burns as the
encampments were cleared out. The national news
was dominated by pictures of burned monks and
Monywa is now associated with fresh crimes by the
regime instead of a new, more democratic order.
The Assistance Association for Political
Prisoners (Burma) raised the specter of use of
incendiary weapons against civilians - a violation
of the Geneva Convention. [2]
Myanmar's
Eleven Media, an anti-Chinese rabble-rouser that
had previously attracted the PRC's ire for false
and incendiary claims that pagodas and temples
were being demolished during construction at
Letpadaung, went with assertions that "chemical
weapons" had been deployed during clearance of the
camps. [3]
There was also an effort to
frame the crackdown as an anti-Buddhist sacrilege
- a virtual political death sentence in Myanmar -
because the camps were cleared on the night of the
eighth full moon, "sacred day of offering woven
kahtina robes to the Lord Buddha." [4]
Government efforts to make things right by
apologizing to the burned monks were rebuffed, as
an article in Irrawaddy, "Monks Suffer in Dignity
But Shall Not Forgive", reveals:
On Saturday, the Sagaing Division
Police Chief San Yu apologized for the raid and
claimed that it was an accident, generating
nationwide anger.
"We don't accept their
apologies," said Wunna Theddhi faintly yet
firmly from his hospital bed. "We demand that
Thein Sein apologizes to us personally and
completely shuts down the project. If they do
so, we are happy to forgive them."
"We
don't accept their offerings either," said
Thusiddha. "For they are trying to appease us
for what they have done," referring to some
packs of soft drinks sent by the local
authorities that lie untouched in the hospital
corridor. [5]
Monks refusing alms is
the ultimate weapon against unworthy civilians in
Theravada Buddhism.
Follow-on
demonstrations against the project, and against
the Chinese presence in Myanmar, led to further
arrests in Yangon, Mandalay, and other locations.
A former ambassador of Myanmar to China warned
that events could spiral out of control and lead
to a crisis in Sino-Myanmarese relations. [6]
Aung San Suu Kyi's visit to Monywa appears
to have been originally scheduled as part of the
work of a commission to investigate the
environmental costs and economic aspects of the
project in response to the demonstrations,
presumably in order to tweak the project and get
buy-in from activists rather than cancel it.
However, the flame-licked debacle of
November 29 turned everything upside down. Instead
of fact-finding, Aung San Suu Kyi's first stop was
at the hospital to commiserate with injured
protesters. The commission's mandate and numbers
were announced and then readjusted and reannounced
in an awkward, public matter to include
investigation of the botched eviction.
Notably, despite the fact that
pro-democracy activists of Generation 88 (who had
been involved in the protests) declined to join
the commission, Aung San Suu Kyi still agreed to
head it.
The Chinese government announced
its expectations for the process in a statement
and interviews by the Chinese ambassador to
Myanmar, Li Junhua. While determinedly striking a
conciliatory note, providing details on the
project meant to clarify that it was not an
instance of unscrupulous Chinese rapacity, and
stating it would cooperate with the investigatory
commission, the PRC made it clear that it wanted
acknowledgment that its contract with the Myanmar
side was legal and enforceable.
"We made a contract with Myanmar
after jointly discussing all issues, such as
relocation, compensation, environmental
protection and profit sharing, through bilateral
negotiations that meet Myanmar's laws and
regulations. However, these problems happened
because people lack access to this information.
So, they misunderstand," he said. …
Mr
Li said the Chinese investor in the Monywa
copper mine project, Wanbao Mining, began
partnering with army-run Union of Myanmar
Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) in 2010.
Wanbao is a subsidiary of state-owned arms
manufacturer China North Industries Corporation,
better known as Norinco.
Under the terms
of the 30-year contract for the Letpadaung
expansion at Monywa, Wanbao will invest US$1
billion, he said, with the Myanmar government to
receive 16.8% of the profits, followed by UMEHL
with 13.8pc and Wanbao with 13.3pc.
He
said the company had paid more than $5 million
in compensation for the more than 6,000 acres
confiscated for the expansion - or about $830 an
acre - and built more than 200 replacement
homes, as well as a school, monastery and
hospital. [7]
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