Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU

As the dust settles, observers are asking what was really achieved by the seriously flawed election process in Myanmar/Burma.

Many of these observers, avowed critics of the election, felt vindicated when the military regime and its political creation, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, perpetrated an outrageous electoral fraud, apparently stuffing the ballot boxes with ‘early votes’ they collected, sometimes under duress, that gave their candidates 76 per cent of the seats, wiping out initial leads in the counting enjoyed by anti-government parties. Read more…

Author: Trevor Wilson, School of International, Political and Strategic Studies, ANU

Burma’s regime-appointed Election Commission announced on Friday that the country’s general elections will be held November 7, as foreshadowed by Burma’s military regime as part of its (discredited) ‘Road Map to Democracy’.

Until now, a protracted process of registering political parties and candidates micro-managed by the Election Commission has been under way, but campaigning is not yet permitted and public comment on the elections remains extremely circumscribed under tighter-than-ever press censorship. Read more…

Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU

Claims that Burma is planning a nuclear weapons program have been circulating ever since Burma began a nuclear science training program with Russia in 2002, but until recently there was little hard evidence to back up these claims. A detailed report published in June from a Burmese Army defector and commissioned by the democracy advocacy broadcasting network, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) finally provided some evidence for the claims.

The June report was scrutinised by  former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspector, Robert Kelley, an American. Read more…

Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU

There is widespread speculation that Burma’s National League for Democracy (NLD) will shortly decide against registering for Burma’s 2010 elections under the heavily unbalanced election law promulgated by Burma’s military regime in early March. NLD members are reportedly divided on whether the party should participate in the elections, presumably fearing that the party stands little chance with its leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest (as she was during Burma’s previous elections, which the NLD ‘won’).

Most observers acknowledge the disadvantageous environment in which these elections will be held rather than examining the consequences of the NLD non-participation, which are potentially very serious. Read more…

Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU

One of the Obama Administration’s most politically radical yet strategically insignificant policy shifts has been to resume regular diplomatic contact with the Burmese military regime. Indeed, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell, visited Burma in November.

In content, the new policy may seem not to amount to much – pursuing normal high-level exchanges on policy with the generals, providing some more assistance, and allowing regime leaders to travel to and in the United States. But it involves some deeply symbolical steps and recognises for the first time that some direct engagement with the regime might prove more effective in influencing the generals to change some of their unacceptable policies on political freedoms and human rights abuses. Read more…

Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU

The world has been understandably outraged by the ridiculous farce of the Burmese military regime’s trial of opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for breaching the ‘rules’ of her own (illegal) detention.

So obsessed are Burma’s top generals with Aung San Suu Kyi that they fail to see that they could neutralise much criticism by allowing her a genuine degree of personal freedom, even if they continued to restrict her participation in Burma’s political future. As the length of her unjustified detention grows, hostility towards their cruel and ruthless suppression of Suu Kyi increases, from inside as well as outside the country.

Unprecedented gestures such as allowing diplomats or journalists access to the trial were minor concessions that did not divert the regime from their ultimate goal of keeping her in detention, but also did not divert Suu Kyi’s supporters from coming out to support her, albeit in small numbers thanks to the regime’s well-prepared security against protests.

Read more…

Author: Trevor Wilson

Taking stock of Burma (Myanmar) at the end of 2008, it is hard to see improvement in the political and economic situation and equally hard to see international policy leverage proving any more effective than before. Consensus is growing that all policies have largely failed to influence the country’s State Peace and Development Council, and even some former supporters of sanctions now admit that sanctions too have failed.

Yet governments (including Australia’s) continue to add new sanctions to those that are already manifestly not working. Unsurprisingly, most governments never evaluate their sanctions, whose indiscriminate impact on nascent Burmese private enterprise has been documented. Imposing sanctions make the imposer feel good, and anti-regime activists rejoice, but the recipient regime feels they are discriminatory policies if the sanctions are not the universal, mandatory kind. So-called smart sanctions, like the financial sanctions imposed against individuals and organizations connected to the regime, are so cumbersome that main banks prefer not to transfer any funds at all to Burma, even legitimate funds to be used by reputable organisations for genuine humanitarian purposes. Meanwhile, those in the know use well-established but completely unregulated informal networks to transfer funds without the knowledge of governments, thereby circumventing these sanctions.

Read more…