The tropical cyclone currently heading over the Indian Ocean in the direction of Burma and Bangladesh is expected to make landfall on Thursday. In humanitarian terms, the coastline that it will smash into is currently one of the most fragile in the world: up to 140,000 displaced refugees are located in flimsy camps close to the water, already seriously under-resourced – an expected sea surge will instantly flood these sites, and the subsequent gales and rainstorms should ensure they are not fit for habitation.

With only 60-odd hours to go, the Burmese government has begun moving some to higher ground. As an article in DVB today points out, however, many of these are not being moved to safe areas, but merely safer areas – camps slightly further inland, or villages which still lie well within the storm path. Troubling reports are also emerging that authorities are refusing to relocate unregistered IDPs, and are not adequately informing all of the looming dangers, with few government broadcasts having reached the camps.

An armed police officer guards as Muslim refugees stand behind him at a refugee camp in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State, western Burma. Pic: AP.

The IDPs struggled during hot season – food was woefully lacking, as was medicine. If the hot season was bad for them, then the looming monsoon, whose rains arrive will harder and faster as a result of the cyclone, could be disastrous. I visited Ohne Daw refugee camp outside Sittwe in October last year, when the shelters were still flimsy wooden structures with rags stretched over them for roofs. The water, over which Thursday’s cyclone will come roaring, is only a paddy field away.

Displaced Arakanese will also be hit on Thursday, and towns and villages are likely to suffer heavy damage. The hope is that a sense of solidarity will emerge; that the threats from Arakanese towards aid workers who helped the Rohingya, and which proved such an impediment to delivering aid, will dissipate as the indiscriminate winds approach.

(READ MORE: Burma starts evacuations ahead of cyclone)

One also hopes that we will not in any way, shape or form see a repeat of the tragedy that followed Cyclone Nargis in 2008, when the regime’s denial of aid to victims contributed significantly to the 138,000-plus death toll. The UN has said that it is not directly involved in preparation for the cyclone, with the government opting to lead the efforts. Given recent accusations from Human Rights Watch that the government is involved in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, this does not bode well.

(READ MORE: Future looks grim for Burma’s Muslims despite Thein Sein HR vow)

The picture beyond Thursday is also worrying. Will aid, which the government with the help of extremist Arakanese has limited, be stepped up? And where will the displaced go if camps are rendered uninhabitable? They cannot go back to their homes, because for many, they were turned to dust last year. Reintegration into Buddhist-majority communities is dangerous, given that the government has made no attempt at fixing the deep wounds; in fact quite the opposite has happened, and Rohingya are still the same Untermensch they have always been. Will they set up new sites, or will existing camps become even more overpopulated? All options are on the table, and none look good.

Scrutiny of the government’s response to the cyclone is of the utmost importance, and could shed some light on its long-term intentions for the Rohingya. Let’s not forget that all in the cyclone’s path will suffer; it’s just that for one group, the timing really could not be worse, and the potential for certain elements to exploit the disaster for their own gain is certainly there.

The 38-year-old charity worker, a former army captain, will have to serve out six years of his remaining sentence. The charge he is being held on, of defaming a police officer following a land rights protest in January, carries only a three-month sentence. However, all political prisoners freed in a series of amnesties last year were forced to sign an agreement, glossed over by the legion of western countries who hailed the amnesties, that stated they could return to prison at any time if they were deemed to have broken a law.

The gates of Insein Prison in Yangon, Burma. Pic: AP.

Burma’s legal system is inherently corrupt, and its laws made deliberately malleable in order that it can penalize the opposition when real justification is lacking. This is why a prominent activist like Nay Myo Zin, who tackled land confiscations ordered on behalf of a powerful business elite, can find himself back in prison for six years on spurious and minor charges.

More than anything, the conditions attached to the amnesties last year show that released political prisoners are far from free; they are shackled by statutes that ensure they cannot exercise the right to challenge authority, which should be a cornerstone of a functioning democracy.

What will grate the powers that be in Burma is that Nay Myo Zin was one of them, a former military man who turned his back on the army and took up charity work. His mother had said of his time in the military upon his first arrest in 2011 that ““he didn’t enjoy it there – he is a morally strong kid”. Last year he founded the Myanmar Social Development Network, and joined students as they marched to Kachin state earlier this year in protest at the military’s offensive against the Kachin Independence Army.

His re-arrest is one of several examples of the glaring limitations of new protest and freedom of speech laws, which it seems can only be exercised until they begin to cut into the interests of the government and elite. Other examples include the crackdown on anti-copper mine protestors last year; the hounding of a journalist who criticized parliament’s grip on the judiciary; threats by the mining ministry towards a journalist who lodged accusations of corruption, and many more.

The release of political prisoners was one of the key benchmarks set by the EU in terminating sanctions. Despite around 200 remaining in prison, and thousands more facing the daily threat of being returned to prison, the EU last month saw fit to end sanctions and begin serious moves towards investing in the country. The constant promises of vigilance and pressure from foreign powers are wearing thin. Those who have been courting the Burmese government over the past two years are guilty, through dint of their blind support for the government, of abetting the darker elements of this transition, of which Nay Myo Zin is but one casualty.

It is not in the interests of Burma’s political and business leaders, still intensely wary of opposition after half a century of dictatorial rule, to allow influential activists to do as they see fit to alter the structures of power in the country. It is similarly unclear whether it is in the interests of the EU to scratch beneath the surface and really understand what one man’s sentencing means for the wider transition and future promises of reform.

Yet away from the pomp of the ICG awards ceremony, a starkly different picture has been painted. Human Rights Watch released a report Monday that wholly implicates Burma’s government in crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in Arakan state. This isn’t the conclusion of an investigation into the former junta’s rights record, but instead something very current, and for which Thein Sein bears responsibility.

“The Burmese government and security forces are responsible for attacks on the Rohingya [last year] in which crimes against humanity were committed,” said Matthew Smith, a consultant with HRW. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of HRW, said in a statement that the government “engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya that continues today through the denial of aid and restrictions on movement”.

The emphasis of the report, which the group put together using extensive testimonies collected on the ground in Arakan state, is official complicity in the displacement of 125,000 Rohingya, and the deaths of hundreds. The intended end result of this campaign of violence, which has involved local politicians, NGOs and security forces, as well as civilians, is the removal of an entire ethnic group, either through death or displacement.

Burma policemen walk towards burning buildings in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state during sectarian violence in June 2012. Pic: AP.

To date, the government has denied any responsibility for the two major waves of violence in June and October last year. It said in response to HRW’s accusations of complicity by security forces that the claims were “unfounded and not true information … [security forces] took security measures day and night without taking sides and without discrimination of race and religion”.

Eyewitnesses in Arakan state tell otherwise – police, army and the NaSaKa border security group were directly involved in razing houses and escorting violent mobs of Arakanese into Rohingya areas. In Yan Thei village in Mrauk U, police “assisted the killings by disarming the Rohingya of their sticks and other rudimentary weapons they carried to defend themselves,” HRW said. It also details an incident in which a government truck dumped 18 Rohingya bodies outside a Rohingya camp, a practice that is consistent with the campaign of intimidation that is often an ingredient in ethnic cleansing.

(READ MORE: Burma: Democracy veteran Win Tin warns of dark times ahead)

Over in Meiktila in central Burma, where entire Muslim quarters were razed by Buddhist mobs last month, footage has just emerged that shows police watching as Muslim-owned properties are destroyed.

In this context then, one struggles to fathom how ICG could honour Burma’s president. To be sure, Thein Sein has overseen positive developments in several spheres, such as media and opposition political participation. Yet this award is about peace, an area in which he has failed disastrously. “International Crisis Group’s goal is as ambitious as it is vital: to mobilise leaders around the globe to prevent and end deadly conflict,” the statement introducing the award says.

But since Thein Sein came to office, civil war has broken out in Kachin state, fierce rioting has erupted in Arakan state, and several waves of deadly anti-Muslim violence have rocked central Burma, while a huge increase in internal displacement of civilians has occurred, as has unprecedented refugee flows from western Burma to other Southeast Asian countries. The list goes on. He has demonstrably failed to respond to evidence that prominent parliamentarians, such as Dr. Aye Maung from the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, have called for the removal of the Rohingya; indeed last year Thein Sein asked the UN to resettle all 800,000 Rohingya. In ICG’s own words, however, the man should be applauded for his “efforts to bring us closer to a world free of conflict”.

The EU’s decision to drop sanctions is also highly contentious, and for similar reasons, yet it has maintained an arms embargo precisely because of substantial ongoing concerns about the military, which has shown no sign that it intends to mend its ways. ICG, which pins the award to positive developments towards an end to armed conflict, appears to refute those concerns.

The award is especially galling for Burma because ICG has backed a war crimes investigation into the Sri Lankan conflict. ICG is undoubtedly aware of what has occurred in Burma in the two years since Thein Sein became president – it follows the developments there closely, but is evidently guilty of sidelining the negatives and myopically homing in on the positives, despite the scales currently tipping in favour of the former.

It’s hard to tell why exactly they’ve chosen such a controversial position on Burma. Burmese academic Maung Zarni has some very useful thoughts here, while past observers have talked of groups like ICG wanting to become part of a “pacted transition” in Burma, with a pro-trade and aid stance that ultimately reaps significant economic benefits for stakeholders, ICG included. This commentary accuses them of being “democracy manipulators” headed by men and women with key ties to the US elite who would have considerable personal interests in a Burma that is open to business. Either way, one would be wise to take the award with more than a pinch of salt – it’s woefully misguided, and carries the potential to induce a dangerous naivety among those not versed in the major pitfalls of this transition.

Half a year on from the first attacks on Kaman Muslims, and despite the current rioting in Meikhtila and surrounding areas, there still seems to be an attempt in Burmese ultra-nationalist circles to write this violence off as a series of isolated incidents. This reading suggests that the first wave of attacks on Rohingya in June last year are not linked to the first attacks on Kaman Muslims in October, and that the targeting of Kaman has nothing to do with the more recent Meikhtila riots. Instead, individual groups are reacting to provocation from Muslims, which happens to have increased in frequency since June 2012.

Smoke billows from a burning mosque following ethnic unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in Meikhtila Thursday. Pic: AP.

The stance is being used to counter accusations that the violence is born of anti-Muslim sentiment – that beyond just confronting ‘terrorists’ or ‘land-grabbers’, as the Rohingya were branded, an entire ideology is being targeted. This is obviously much harder to justify, and portrays Burma’s militant nationalist movement in a primitive and ugly light, which it doesn’t want.

The signs however are clearly there. In fact they’ve been there for decades, but religious persecution was never really part of the Burma story during the dictatorship, which the world viewed through a very black and white lens. Go back to the civilian government of U Nu, and you’ll see that he expelled the Burma Muslim Congress and made Buddhism the state religion; General Ne Win carried out several pogroms against Rohingya, and deported hundreds of thousands of Indian Hindus and Muslims. The army has for decades attacked sites of Christian and Muslim worship in the ethnic states in a deliberate attempt to Burmanise (“Buddhicise”?) the entire country.

Yet this latest wave of attacks on Muslims is so troubling because of the involvement of civilians, who have otherwise been tolerant of the Christian beliefs of their countrymen. (To be sure, it is highly likely that hardline elements in the government are driving this, and using civilian groups as proxies.)

It’s unclear why fear of Islam is so pervasive, and theories abound, but the geographical spread of this animosity is both hugely concerning and underreported. In Karen state for example, pamphlets were circulated last year ordering locals to cease all interaction with Muslims – trading, marriage, and so on. In the state capital of Pa’an there are reports that stickers bearing ‘969’ are now frequently appearing on buildings (’969‘ signifies Buddhist precepts, and has been used recently as a label by the militant nationalist movement to counter the ’786′ stickers used to identify Muslim buildings – which should of course also be debated). The Karen Human Rights Group has also documented massive forced relocation of Muslim communities by the army in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Meikhtila violence should be seen as the latest manifestation of an historic Islamophobic streak in Burma. Of course there is bitter irony in reports of civilians and monks colluding with security forces in last week’s attacks; that a monk threatened violence against a photographer who wants to shine a light on persecution in Burma; that agitators are roaming the streets of Rangoon provoking Muslims into attacking. It’s ironic because these monks and civilians, evidently suffering from some acute form of historical amnesia, can only embolden the military to recast itself as “protectors” of the nation.

The signs of a major pogrom against Muslims are now visible. This isn’t mass hysteria from ‘foreign anti-Buddhist saboteurs’, as anyone who comments critically on this issue is called, but is very real and evident. Of all the photos and videos of the Meikhtila riots, the charred bodies and the woman shouting “Kill them, kill them!” that circulated last week, it was this one that I found both effective in capturing the state of play in Burma now, and incredibly disturbing: Muslims being marched out of town by police with their hands above their heads and a child looking back in the crowd. They are being sent to a football stadium where the government will tell them they are being held for their own protection, under armed guard. Given there appears to be no attempt by the government to try to rebuild community cohesion (we only need to look to Arakan state for evidence), we must keep a close watch on whether these relocation sites become permanent, and the implications of this.

The encampment occupied by protesters burns at the Letpadaung mine following a crackdown on the morning of November 29 last year. Pic: AP.

In the early hours of the morning of 29 November, riot police fired incendiary devices into a tightly packed protest camp in Monywa in Sagaing Division. According to subsequent testimonies from victims, who numbered close to one hundred, plumes of fire shot up and torched tents and the skins of those close by. It was the most aggressive response to popular dissent since the September 2007 crackdown, and wholly contradicted government moves to gradually open up the space for free protest in Burma.

In the following weeks a government-led commission chaired by Aung San Suu Kyi was set up to investigate the crackdown. On paper it appeared the most progressive of several rights-based initiatives by the government – the National Human Rights Commission, for instance, is deemed ineffective given the domination of pro-military figures, while the team tasked with probing the Arakan state violence includes outwardly racist and/or ambivalent characters. The hopes for a robust investigation into the Letpadaung crackdown were therefore high.

That all came crashing to the ground this week with the release of its report, which had been delayed several times. Some key conclusions have been drawn that beg serious questions of the mindset of the team behind it.

A Buddhist monk who was injured in the crackdown seen in hospital last November. Pic: AP.

The first is the claim that police fired the devices, said to be smoke bombs, “without knowing what their effect would be”. Two issues arise from this: the first is the acknowledgement by the government that its security forces are woefully inept at handling highly dangerous equipment. Given the low quality of training and resources available, this isn’t really surprising, yet it appears to have been used to excuse the disproportionate reaction to the protest. Moreover, the report made no mention of action to be taken on the perpetrators, and referred to the injuries as “unnecessary”. Considering the brutality of the response, the language used is particularly soft.

The second is that, according to the report, riot police fired 55 devices into the camp. It’s not clear how many caught fire, but eyewitnesses spoke in plurals when they described the flames shooting up into the sky: “They fired 10 rounds; five at a time,” one told the Democratic Voice of Burma. “And the sparks that landed on people’s clothing couldn’t be shaken off; they burst into flames when they attempted to do so.”

The fact that it was night time would have made it easier to see that these smoke bombs had become more than just smoke bombs. If the police want to claim that they intended no harm, then why did they not stop after the first sign that things had gone wrong? Yet more and more were fired into the camp. We can’t say whether or not the riot police had malicious intentions, but the results don’t look good.

Aung San Suu Kyi waves to her supporters as she arrives in Monywa town. When she returns this time, she may be the subject of protests. Pic: AP.

The feeling across the board is one of anger at the report’s findings, particularly its conclusion that the mine operation should continue, despite acknowledging the environmental damage and that it brought only “slight” benefits to Burma. The mine however is particularly sensitive for the government, given heavy investment from powerful military figures and China (more on that here). In this instance at least, HRW’s statement appears to have been answered – military-invested projects remain above the law, as do security forces tasked with ‘protecting’ them.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who has become the target of the widespread anger over the report, will travel to the site today. Protestors said previously that they would continue their actions if the mine were to continue (as the report recommends). We don’t know what role she had in the final conclusions of the report, or whether her own recommendations were overruled, but in the end her name is attached to it, and her position in the commission is a senior one. For the first time in her life, Suu Kyi risks becoming the target of protests from Burmese when she travels to Letpadaung.

The second is that they stay in Arakan state, which for the non-Buddhist community is increasingly resembling a vast open-air prison. The overwhelming majority of Rohingya are now living in either refugee camps or in towns in northern Arakan state that are strictly off limits to foreigners. Inhabitants of towns like Maungdaw and Buthidaung are starved of outside assistance, in a country that denies them the most basic of social protections.

A boat carrying 73 Rohingya refugees is intercepted by Thai authorities off the sea in Phuket, southern Thailand last month. Pic: AP.

Contrary to the narrative of a country lessening restrictions on its inhabitants, quite the opposite is happening in Arakan state. DVB last week quoted local authorities in the town of Sandoway (Thandwe) who said they had been ordered to block all Muslims from leaving their townships, Kaman included. Previously the restriction had been applied only to Rohingya without ID cards – now it is a blanket ban, and suggests the discriminatory policy that until recently targeted only Rohingya has evolved into something more sinister.

The refugee camps are another story. Many sprung up in the aftermath of the June 2012 rioting and quickly became overcrowded as Rohingya fled urban areas, later to be joined by Kaman as attacks from Arakanese nationalists widened. Close to 120,000 Muslims are thought to be living in camps of varying quality: some are clusters of flimsy wooden frames covered by rags that qualify as the most basic and fragile of shelters, and will not withstand the coming rainy season.

Others, like the newly built huts at Ohne Dawgyi, are much sturdier. They are in dire need, but have been built as if they are there to stay – one may wonder whether the government intends their inhabitants to stay put too. UN special rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana touched on this in a statement last week in which he said that despite government assurances to the contrary, “the information among stakeholders is that this [return of displaced to their villages] won’t take place and the current settlements will become permanent”. Past fears that an apartheid state is developing are given extra strength.

An immigration officer fills out forms during an operation to verify the citizenship of Muslims living in the western Burma village of Sin Thet Maw late last year. Pic: AP.

Quintana added that one camp he visited “felt more like a prison than a camp”, and warned that lack of freedom of movement for inhabitants lessened the chances of “rebuilding trust between communities through interaction”. Outside of the camps, the prison theme gets worse – reports have emerged of children as young as 10 being held in jails in northern Arakan state on charges of inciting the unrest that has plagued the region for eight months.

Most would consider this environment, and the physical and psychological burden it carries, uninhabitable. But the other option is equally dire. The Sri Lankan navy is currently searching for around 100 ‘boatpeople’, in all likelihood Rohingya, adrift at sea. They may have been on the water for up to two months. Each day matters hugely, given how scarce supplies, particularly food and water, often are on these boats.

Now we are well into the annual ‘boat season’, a perversely evocative term for the time of year when thousands of Rohingya set sail, often to their deaths. The timing coincides with an apparent worsening of conditions in Arakan state, so expect the number of drownings to rise.

'Democracy' at work? Military representatives attend Burma's parliament. Now they have power over the judicial system. Pic: AP.

Every day we see reminders about the shortcomings of Burma’s democratic reform: conflict in Kachin state, ethno-religious violence in Arakan state, continued incarceration of political prisoners, and so on. But the more technical issues often don’t get the media attention they deserve, despite their potential to have a more ingrained and lasting effect on the country’s future than the above examples.

A case in point is the fiasco that unfurled in parliament this week: President Thein Sein (apparently reluctantly) signed a bill that gives parliament a degree of influence over the judiciary that calls into serious doubt the independence of Burma’s legal system.

“Legal analysts say the changes constitute a cynical attempt by parliament, which is dominated by former military cronies, to exert pressure on the tribunal without having to alter Burma’s controversial 2008 legislation,” writes DVB. “The new law hands parliament the authority to challenge the tribunal’s decisions, and greater input over the appointment of its chairman, who would in turn be required to report back to them and the president on his work, raising questions over his independence.”

Under the former junta, there was no judicial independence – the country’s courts were essentially processing rooms for the ‘criminal’ opposition, where verdicts were foregone conclusions. Yet a supposed transition to democracy should have at its core an overhaul of the key operating mechanisms of a dictatorship, of which control of the judges is one. This week’s move suggests that the pressure on Thein Sein to maintain this hierarchy is stronger than he is.

The Burmese public’s ability to question parliament’s bloated powers in this ‘democratic’ era has also been placed under the spotlight. Last week a blogger, known only as Dr Seik Phwa, wrote that the country’s legislature was acting “above the law” in its attempt to gain greater control of the legal system.

But so sensitive is this issue that one MP tabled the creation of a special committee to investigate the blogger. His motion was passed by 347 votes to 157, suggesting that an overwhelming majority in parliament want judicial control.

This should be cause for great concern, given that the most MPs are either uniformed military, or military-aligned, elitist members of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) whose political outlook was shaped by their careers under the former junta. Their interference in, and potential sabotaging of, court cases that could threaten the military’s social and economic standing – human rights abuses, land confiscation, corruption and so on – would bode very ill for the country’s future.

Thein Sein’s reported defense of judicial independence should be noted and commended. Why he buckled however is not clear, although it again raises questions as to how much power he actually has, particularly given ongoing military attacks in Kachin state despite several calls for their cessation. Australian academic Nicholas Farrelly makes an interesting point in the New Mandala blog: “Parts of the emerging story suggest that within the regime Thein Sein needs to bolster wavering support by letting the army off the leash to prosecute its war.”

This may also account for why he has capitulated to the hawks in parliament over the constitutional tribunal law. At the same time, however, we really don’t know Thein Sein: he was a key architect of much of the former junta’s policies, and so the argument could still be made that the progressive wave he is riding on is a front to distract the world while business continues as usual in Burma. Either way, unless he takes bold steps that hinder parliament’s attempts to snatch undue power, we could see a continuation of Burma’s ugly past.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Pic: AP.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Sinawatra indulged in some loaded conjecturing yesterday when she warned that the 840-plus Rohingya in detention in Thailand “might join the southern insurgency rather than seek asylum in a third country”. The men, women and children in question were found in Songkla’s Sadao district over the course of several raids last week on smuggling dens run by human trafficking rackets.

Their future is now the subject of a tussle between Thai authorities and the UN refugee agency, although Yingluck made clear her feelings that they are a threat to Thailand and should be deported back to Burma (a veritable lions’ den for the stateless Muslims). That had anyway seemed likely until the UN intervened and stalled the deportation, and Thailand now appears to be feeling the pressure of several years of international condemnation following other grisly episodes involving the Rohingya.

The Prime Minister’s statement, apparently unsubstantiated, is a reckless one, based mainly on the hackneyed assumption that any disenfranchised Muslim is automatically a terrorist threat. It risks directing anti-Muslim sentiment at the Rohingya, who are in Thailand in part to escape that branding.

Many of these people have suffered similar treatment in Burma, where Arakanese politicians and a worrying cross-section of the Burmese population brand them ‘terrorists’ and have embarked on a witch-hunt to expose Rohingya ‘sympathisers’ among Arakanese.

Thai media’s labeling of the group as “illegal migrants”, while technically true, also distorts the picture somewhat. Given the reasons why they are in Thailand – to escape abject poverty, racial and religious persecution, vicious ethno-religious violence, bans on accessing state education and healthcare, and much more – the line between ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ is heavily blurred. Deporting these ‘migrants’ could in fact amount to refoulement (international law-speak for returning a victim of persecution to a place of danger), which is illegal.

Close scrutiny of Thailand’s actions is now of the utmost importance, with the Thai navy having been placed on alert for signs of more boatloads of Rohingya. In 2008 the navy towed a boatload of Rohingya back out to sea and left many to dehydrate to death – the subsequent media coverage sparked international condemnation that shone a spotlight on Thailand’s apathetic attitude towards refugees (it is not a signatory of the UN convention on refugees). This focus must continue.

Among the 840 Rohingya was a 10-year-old boy: “According to his story, Nu Rahasim’s parents and siblings all were brutally killed by authorities,” said the Bangkok Post. “The orphaned Nu, who showed scars he said came from beatings and slashes by Myanmar troops, then joined a group of 140 Rohingya who sought help from an affluent man in the violence-plagued [Arakan] state, in the hope of getting out of the country.”

The last thing he needs is for a world leader to suggest he may become a terrorist – it could happen, but no more so than any other disenfranchised youth, whether they be white, black, Muslim or Christian. People aren’t born with extremist tendencies. The 10-year-old probably thought he was one of the lucky ones when he made it to Thailand. Now he is in detention, slandered by a prime minister, and awaits possible return to the country he risked death to flee.

Aung San Suu Kyi. Maybe not as squeaky clean as people had hoped. Pic: AP.

A very interesting piece ran in The Times (UK) today under the headline, ‘Suu Kyi under fire for taking money from cronies of the former regime’. The paper cited sources from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party who admitted to “receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds from companies owned by the reviled bosses”, who reportedly include Tay Za and Zaw Zaw, two of the country’s most notorious tycoons.

According to a recent Irrawaddy article, the Tay Za-owned conglomerate, Htoo Trading, donated $82,353 to NLD education and health initiaves. Suu Kyi responded to the criticism by saying that the businessmen had contributed to a good cause. “What is wrong with that? … People may have become rich in different ways. What must be investigated is whether they were involved in any illegal action to make themselves rich,” she said.

That final statement is a bizarre one for her to make, given the notoriety of the cronies. A US cable from 2009 states: “Rumors abound that Tay Za has long smuggled Chinese weapons into Burma via his aviation and trading businesses.” Another donor, Kyaw Win, who gave $158,824 to the NLD via his subsidiary company Sky Net, is closely linked with recent land confiscations, while Zaw Zaw, like the rest, had been under US and EU sanctions (the magnate’s Max Myanmar consortium is one of Burma’s biggest, and helped build the new capital Naypyidaw). Considering the backgrounds of the donors, the money may well be tainted.

Suu Kyi is believed to have met with both Tay Za and Zaw Zaw several times between her release from house arrest and election to parliament in April 2012, although it is unclear what the nature of the meetings was. The NLD has not revealed whether it probed how each donor generated the funds.

Prior to becoming a politician, the opposition icon had long supported sanctions against the former junta and its cronies who dominate the economy. In a 1997 interview she said: “Unless there is free and fair competition, there can’t be healthy economic development. And what we have in Burma now is not an open-market economy that allows free and fair competition, but a form of colonialism makes a few people very, very wealthy. It’s what you would call crony capitalism.”

The use of Tay Za’s donations are particularly irksome, considering the relationship between Burma’s military and the opposition. As well as the alleged procurement of Chinese weapons, his Myanmar Avia Company is thought to have close business ties with Russia’s major state-owned military aircraft manufacturer, MAPO. “Opposition groups and military analysts say Tay Za’s position at Avia Export made him instrumental in the military’s purchase in 2001 of 10 MiG 29 jet fighters valued at US$130 million,” said Asia Times in 2008.

At a time when the Burmese military is using air strikes on Kachin army positions in the north, and yesterday’s shelling of the town of Laiza, which killed three civilians, Suu Kyi’s attempts to shrug off the controversy will grate. During a UK parliamentary session yesterday on the attacks in Kachin state, an MP said that “the planes [used by Burmese army] are of Chinese origin and the gunships are Russian.”

The Nobel Peace Laureate has been criticized for failing to speak out on behalf of the Kachin, and her recent statements on cronies (“Give them a chance to reform”) and the military (“I have a soft spot for the army”) won’t help. Benedict Rogers, from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, thinks the revelations “disappointing for many who viewed her as a moral leader in the mould of Gandhi or Martin Luther King.”

A feeling is growing that the democracy icon is treading on increasingly thin ice – she has refused to condemn army assaults in Kachin state, and speak out on the ethno-religious crisis in Arakan state. She would do well to really tackle head on the recent criticism she has received, rather than the high-handed responses she is increasingly deploying to answer critics.

Indian students shout slogans during a protest rally in Hyderabad, India last month. Pic: AP.

Since the death of the Indian gang-rape victim a fortnight ago, the crisis affecting the security of women in that country has come to the fore. “When I was 17, I could not have imagined thousands of people marching against rape in India, as we have seen these past few weeks,” writes Sohaila Abdulalia, who was raped as a teenager, in a strong Op-Ed in the New York Times.

Outpourings of grief and condolences to the family of this anonymous girl followed news of her death. “That girl, the one without the name. The one just like us. The one whose battered body stood for all the anonymous women in this country whose rapes and deaths are a footnote in the left-hand column of the newspaper,” begins a powerful and moving essay by Nilanjana Roy.

The hope is that the grisly affair will set in motion a concerted effort in India to tackle the root causes of the problem. Moreover, it may serve to spotlight crises in other overwhelmingly patriarchal societies where rape is common.

But in many countries, the mere “footnote” that Roy laments simply does not exist. Like many cases in India, the problem in Burma only makes the news when it is linked to something more alarming – the rape in June 2012 that triggered rioting in Arakan state, for example; or the recent alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl in Rangoon, which may have only caught our attention because the victim says it was carried out by a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

Much of the international coverage of the problem in Burma focuses on rape of ethnic women by the military, and accusations that this is a state-sanctioned attempt to alter the ethnic balance of the country (see a past post on ‘Rape as military policy in Burma’). While this is only part of the problem, and distracts attention from the frequency of rape by civilian men, its examination nevertheless offers insight into why the problem is so pervasive.

“For rape to be committed again and again with impunity, the society in which it occurs must give permission, either overt or tacit, to the perpetrators,” says the School of Rape report that came out in 1998. “This is particularly true in a society as tightly controlled as Burma, where this permission for soldiers to rape arises out of the general attitude toward women embedded in contemporary society.”

As the Women Under Siege Project notes, “These norms, in turn, exacerbate the consequences of sexualized violence and contribute to the retraumatization of female survivors who feel rejected by their communities, and often, even family members.” The subordination of women to men also heavily skews the “victim” status, and even more so when the victim is non-Burman, for whom Burmese troops have been indoctrinated to consider subhuman.

More worrying now is the rabid anti-Muslim fervour that has erupted in Burma since the Arakan violence. If ethnic Kachin and Shan women are considered untermensch by soldiers, then what does that presage for Muslim women living among a majority Burman civilian population in which Islamophobia is becoming a growing concern?

An ominous sign is the response to the alleged rape of the 15-year-old girl by an NLD member. A party spokesperson said in the first sentence of a statement on the matter that the “two persons involved …are followers of the Islamic religion”, to which a Facebook user rightly responded, “It is really necessary to mention their religion?” As DVB reports, however, other responses were not as measured. “It’s a case between two kalars, no need to be concerned,” one Facebook user said (‘Kalar’ is a pejorative term for persons of South Asian descent). Another said:  “Just kalars doing kalar thing.” The signs are clearly not good.

Whether or not substantial action is now taken by the government in New Delhi to curtail the frequency of rape, the anonymous Indian victim has come to symbolize the plight of woman the country over.

“Don’t tell me her name; I don’t need to know it, to cry for her,” finishes Roy. True, but you do need to know it has happened, and in many countries the discourse does not exist to first and foremost consider a rape as worthy of a newspaper column, and then take measures to respond to it. Correcting the balance in a male dominated society involves a lengthy and painful effort to reshape indifferent or misogynistic attitudes among men.

The silver lining in Burma however is the media coverage of a recent rape of a disabled girl in Rangoon that did not preempt rioting or involve prominent figures. What it has done however is to trigger calls for better laws to protect the vulnerable, whether it be women, the disabled or ethnic minorities. If the tide is beginning to turn, then we may need to look to India and the thousands who took to the streets to fight for rights for women there and beyond its borders.

A Kachin soldier mans a frontline position near Laiza. Pic: AP.

There is now enough video and photo evidence to confirm that the Burmese military has deployed fighter jets and helicopters close to its border with China to use against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). One video circulating on Facebook, in which you can hear a man speaking Kachin, shows a fighter jet being shot down. Despite this, and various other videos of attack helicopters and planes flying low over KIA positions, the government on Monday denied it was using aerial power. Instead it said the planes, which Kachin sources have claimed include Serbian-made G4 trainer jets, are being used to resupply Burmese battalions after KIA troops had cut off roads.

Past reports of planes flying over KIA positions (and allegations the Burmese army was using chemical weapons) have surfaced since fighting first broke out in June 2011, although without the intensity of the latest wave from the Burmese side. Nor was there the hard video evidence that has emerged in the past fortnight.

It’s probably safe to say then that the conflict has moved into a new phase, as the Burmese push closer to the Kachin headquarters in Laiza (the government had reportedly ordered the KIA to clear a key supply road by 25 December, or risk heavier attacks). “We’ve heard motor fire in every 20 minutes day and night since 14 December,” one person wrote.

A source currently in Laiza told me today that fighting has broken out around Bumre Mountain, which lies around seven kilometres from Laiza, and is thus very close to the China border. It may well also be the closest that fighting has got to Laiza. Other unverified reports from the KIA claim the Chinese are complicit in the fighting.

“All the jets they have been using to crush the posts around Laiza are attacking Pangwa areas now,” another source said in an email. “They’re using Chinese airspace and bombarding there. So the Chinese police from border point-6 have gone. It’s obvious that China is the accomplice in this.”

Again, this can’t be independently confirmed, yet the Burmese army is known to have used Chinese territory earlier this year to launch a rear-guard assault on a Kachin battalion north of Laiza. That may or may not have been done this with the permission of Chinese authorities.

China however should be growing nervous at the proximity of the fighting to its border (Laiza town sits directly on the borderline). On several occasions, notably after the Burmese attack on Kokang rebels in 2009 that forced 30,000 refugees into China, it has warned Burma to maintain stability in the border regions where it has various lucrative investments. It may then have pressured Burma into attempting a final rout of the Kachin army, which as investment in Kachin state grows becomes a potentially destabilising force, although its strained relations with the government cloud the picture somewhat.

Of pressing concern is the safety of refugees close to Laiza. Conditions are already poor with the arrival of winter snow in the Kachin mountains, meaning that should fighting draw closer to the camps, the ability of refugees to flee will be hugely impeded. Kachin sources have said that planes and helicopters have flown over Je Yang and Hpung Lum Yang camps near Laiza, and as a result, “trenches and foxholes have been dug around the camps”. If China is indeed playing a hand in this latest push, then one can assume it would also tighten the border and potentially block refugees from crossing over (it already expelled around 7,000 Kachin refugees from its territory earlier this year). The situation is endlessly traumatic for the 70,000-odd displaced Kachin.

The lack of international condemnation for the latest wave of attacks is puzzling. “Just like Syria but where’s the intl outrage?” tweeted one journalist of the aerial assaults. Kachin have also used social media to vent anger at Aung San Suu Kyi, whom they say has not responded with any substance to the conflict. It’s worth remembering that President Thein Sein has twice already ordered troops to cease attacks on the Kachin, but clearly to no avail.

“The Burmese military is wrong to believe that the tenuous peace in other parts of Burma has given it a free hand to handle the Kachin conflict as it pleases,” reads a measured and important editorial in the Irrawaddy last week. “All it is doing is fanning the flames of ethnic resentment, and making real peace harder to achieve in the long run.”

Burma Prime Minister Thein Sein. Pic: AP.

President Thein Sein on Monday called for the cessation of armed conflict in Burma, yet huge doubts still exists over whether he is in a position to make this happen. As head of state, his influence over state institutions should be strong, yet twice in the past year he has called on troops to end attacks on ethnic Kachin in the north, and to no avail.

During Burma’s half century of military rule, the army was the government; Thein Sein, as general-cum-prime minister, attempted to be the politically acceptable face of the junta, but he was in a position of subordination to the military. His rise to civilian president should have corrected that, but he has struggled to elevate the civilian branch of government above that of the military, which remains the most powerful institution: the 25 percent of parliamentary seats held by uniformed military, in addition to the many military-backed MPs with the Union Solidarity and Development Party, allow them overarching powers, particularly with regards to amendments to the constitution, which require 75 percent parliamentary approval.

His inability to rein the military in became clear after he twice called for the army “not to start any fighting with the KIA (Kachin Independence Army) in Kachin State, except for self defence” – first in December 2011, then again in January this year. Indeed the Kachin Women Association Thailand (KWAT) believes the army “intensified the fighting after these orders were sent”.

Why is this the case? Writing in Democratic Voice of Burma this week, Pangmu Shayi, from Kachinland News, said: “The army has its own agenda for continuing this war, foremost being maintaining its grip on this resource-rich area where personal and institutional fortunes are so intricately intertwined.”

There is a strong and crucial link between the military and economy, given the nature of the country’s recent history where the lines between business tycoon and military general were heavily blurred. The military elites will certainly not want any part of the reforms cutting into their economic interests (note, for instance, how close the army and the gas sector is), which is likely why they are the one institution not touched by Thein Sein’s reforms.

Moreover, the approaches made by Thein Sein’s cabinet to ethnic armies is producing mixed results. While highly tenuous ceasefires have been signed with Shan and Karen groups, the Kachin have refused to lay down arms before a political solution to the roots of the conflict are found (see here for why a mere ceasefire will not work in Kachin state).  Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner said following a visit to Kachin state recently that Aung Min, the government’s chief political negotiator, in fact “has no mandate to negotiate political issues” with the Kachin.

Lintner’s observations were that the conflict is very much in full swing, one year on from Thein Sein’s calls for its cessation.

“Helicopter gunships hover in the sky above a battlefield,” he writes in Asia Times Online. “The constant sound of explosions and gunfire pierce the night for an estimated 100,000 refugees and internally displaced people. Military hospitals are full of wounded government soldiers, while bridges, communication lines and other crucial infrastructure lie in war-torn ruins.”

It was Lintner who discovered a cache of Swedish-made weapons captured by the Kachin from Burmese troops. They were sold to Burma by India on the proviso that they would only be used against insurgent groups along the India border, but their final destination in Kachin state again shows weak commanding power by the government, who would have overseen the contract, over the military.

It came in the wake of months of fighting between Muslim and Buddhist communities in Arakan state that has resulted in discoveries of mass graves and apartheid-like segregationist measures.

Now two photos have emerged that apparently show this witch-hunt to be well under way. Two Arakanese men are pictured being paraded around with placards around their neck. One man, allegedly from the town of Myebon near Sittwe, wears one sign that reads “’I am a traitor and slave of Kalar”.

Photo taken from Facebook shows man wearing placard that reads 'I am a traitor and slave of Kalar' being praraded around Myebon in Arakan state (Facebook).

A caption beneath the photo that was circulated on Facebook says, “A man who buys/sells groceries to Kalars in Myebon on public display (a lesson for all Arakanese people to take)”. The photo is dated from August this year.

A second, undated photo shows a different man with a placard that says, “I am a traitor”. Furthermore, it appears he has been forced to wear a woman’s longyi on his head. Burmese males consider the wearing of female garments to be culturally insulting, and a potential threat to the standing of males in society (more on that here).

Man forced to wear a woman's longyi and placard reading "I am a traitor" (Source: M-Media)

The authenticity of the photos cannot be independently confirmed, although both are consistent with a now documented drive in Arakan state (and other parts of Burma) to weed out those who are seen to be helping the Rohingya, a Muslim minority who have borne the brunt of the ethno-religious violence between Buddhists and Muslims that began in June.

There’s something chillingly medieval about the whole affair – both what it means for Arakanese who continue to interact with Muslims (who until June co-existed comparatively harmoniously), and of course for the Muslim community itself, which now exists mainly in camps and urban ghettos. Judging by the expression on the men’s faces, public humiliation has become an effective weapon in this conflict.

And as has been mentioned time and again, the role that monks have played in whipping up this anti-Muslim fervour never ceases to shock.

Burma's President Thein Sein. Pic: AP.

Bertil Lintner, journalist and specialist on ethnic conflict in Burma

There is no peace in Kachin state, and Thein Sein himself suggested that the UNHCR should remove all Rohingygas from Burma and put them in a camp somewhere, i.e. organised ethnic cleansing. In Shan State, there is, officially, a ceasefire agreement but skirmishes happen every day. In Karen State, there is also an official ceasefire but the area remains heavily militarised. There can be no peace in Burma unless they throw out the 2008 constitution, which is neither democratic nor federal, and get a new one, which is democratic as well as federal. And Thein Sein is not interested in that. There are some shaky ceasefire agreements here and there, but nothing then even resembles a lasting solution to Burma’s ethnic crisis. To give him a “peace prize” is outright stupid and just shows how naive ICG is in its assessments of the situation in Burma.

Aung Naing Oo, political analyst and deputy director of the Vahu Development Institute

I think it’s great. He deserves recognition. He has a tough job dealing with the legacies of the military rule. He has achieved so much. In terms of peace, for instance, although the Kachin have yet to enter into ceasefire, there is progress on every front. For instance, the amputation ward at 2,000 bed military hospital just outside Yangon is now just a store room gathering dust; before it had around 200 amputees, and this is indicative of how well the peace process is going. He is very open to discussing ethnic issues and grievances. I think if there is someone who deserves recognition in our country, it is him. And these recognitions will help him go further to cement his work on peace and democratization.

Khin Ohmar, exiled activist and chairperson of the Network for Democracy and Development

Thein Sein’s cynical maneuvering has left many outsiders with a skewed view of the realities for many people in Burma, especially those in ethnic areas. Military offensives and a plethora of human rights abuses by the Burma army started under his watch and are continuing with impunity in Kachin state, while humanitarian aid is blocked. Political prisoners are used as bargaining chips in a ploy to gain concessions from the international community. He does nothing as crony businessmen confiscate large swathes of land from the rural poor. He is allowing the Rohingya to burn at the hands of racist mobs while continuing to deny their basic rights. Thein Sein is not a person who promotes peace.

Cheery Zahau, ethnic Chin human rights activist

I am not convinced that Thein Sein has made his best effort to end ongoing armed conflicts in Kachin state, where the military’s actions are in breach of international law. His approach to the Rohingya crisis is not aligned with international human rights standards and has caused serious humanitarian problems as people continue to suffer. His government has not tried to eliminate racial or religious discrimination that is deeply rooted in Burmese society and encouraged by the policies of the former military junta. If the president envisages a peaceful co-existence of the many ethnic groups in Burma, the first step should be national reconciliation among the people that includes ethnic political entities. These steps have yet to be achieved. The president has the upper hand, but I don’t see persistence in the struggle to achieve democracy and peace from his side.

But I have no doubt that President Thein Sein has the goodwill to lead the country towards genuine democratization. He’s made risky decisions, such as halting Myitsone Dam project; he has granted amnesties to political prisoners and some criminals, although the continued lack of a formal judicial process shows that he has power over the judicial system, which is not healthy in the long-term. The president needs to push for institutionalized reforms on military, equal power at the parliament and a more democratic and transparent administration.

Nicholas Farrelly, Southeast Asia specialist at the Australia National University

President Thein Sein deserves high accolades. He is the central player in an historic and risky transformation of what was until very recently a wretched political system. Slowly but surely the system is improving, and with it the prospects of millions of ordinary Burmese. Nonetheless, it is early days and inevitably there are still plenty of problems. The ongoing war in Kachin areas and the sectarian strife in western Burma are at the top of that list. But there is nonetheless a real chance that those issues can now be resolved. If Thein Sein  ultimately manages to bring lasting peace to ethnic minority areas, deliver on real democratic reform and then gracefully retire from public life he will have the eternal gratitude of the Burmese people. And he may even pick up a Nobel Peace Prize along the way.

It’s all depressingly familiar – the same warnings were issued a year ago, and today refugee numbers have not diminished, nor has the government’s reluctance to allow international aid groups unfettered access to victims of the conflict. They, and millions of others in the country, know little of the heady developments of the past 12 months in Burma.

An issue often overlooked in coverage of Burma’s various conflicts is the psychological toll that those forced to flee their homes carry, but IRIN last week spoke with local aid worker May Li Awng who spelled out the situation.

A child holds a bowl of rice at a refugee camps in Laiza, northern Burma. Pic: AP.

“Some students have no interest in schooling and are refusing to go to school. They are listless – gazing somewhere. At night, they cry and sleep-walk.” May Li Awng directs the WPN umbrella group of Kachin NGOs who, given the woeful lack of outside assistance getting to the refugees, have essentially spearheaded the aid effort. They deserve great respect for their work.

Some estimate that around 50 percent of displaced Kachin are suffering from trauma. “We don’t have the human resources to heal such traumatized cases,” May Li Awng told IRIN. “All of the groups [donors] are just interested in giving material assistance. Few are interested in such issues.”

Other aid workers told me of similar concerns when I was there in June this year. La Rip, coordinator of the Relief Action Network for Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees (RANIR), based in Laiza, said that reductions in outside funding had forced them to concentrate on the primary concerns of physical health and food supplies. This means that for many, young children especially, their trauma is left to fester.

He said that local aid workers were either too overrun or unequipped to tackle the psychological problems emerging among the displaced. A year ago he warned: “We are at our wit’s end. If we don’t get support within the next couple of weeks, there could be serious problems with food and shelter shortages and worsening weather.” Now, with no UN convoy having reached eastern Kachin state since July, the same situation presents itself.

Aside from the fighting itself, the treatment of civilians by Burmese troops will have left deep scars. When the conflict first erupted in June 2011, various reports told of gang rapes and mutilation of Kachin women by soldiers, torture of males considered collaborators with the Kachin Independence Army, and so on. This has not stopped - a mother of four was reportedly gang raped near the town of Mogaung in Kachin state on 1 November by Burmese soldiers. (See here for a past blog post on the Burma army’s use of rape as a weapon of war).

Moreover, children were often forced to flee their homes amid gunfire and walk days to reach safer ground, many getting ill along the way. They remain confined to refugee camps in a tormenting state of limbo.

Funding clearly needs to be ramped up. President Obama touched on the conflict during his speech at Rangoon University last week, but one hopes he pressed for greater international access and an end to attacks by the Burmese army when he met privately with President Thein Sein. The ethno-religious violence in Arakan state will have distracted from Kachin state, but both situations require urgent attention.

But all appears not what it seems. The area is bereft of tigers, according to activist Bauk Ja who spoke with the Irrawaddy last week. “The hunters have told me there are no more tigers left,” she says.

“In mid-2010, less than a year before fighting erupted throughout Kachin State, Bawk Jar conducted an extensive field trip to remote parts of the valley where tigers were known to live,” writes the Irrawaddy, in a thorough piece on the subject. “What she saw was considerably different from previous trips to the area. Despite being the heart of the tiger reserve most of the trees had been chopped down, and a once-vibrant ecosystem destroyed.”

An adult tiger sets off a camera trap in Burma in 2001. Once considered a pest in the region, the number of tigers left in Burma is in steady decline. Pic: AP.

Rather than being a hotbed of conservation activity, the Hukawng Valley has become the playground of the Yuzana Company, a powerful Burmese conglomerate run by tycoon Htay Myint, who is also a sitting MP. The company is known to have close ties to the Burmese military – Htay Myint’s close relationship with former regional commander Maj-Gen Ohn Myint enabled Yuzana’s access to Hukawng, and in 2010, the company was granted a license to begin work there.

What followed over the next three years was the destruction of around 200,000 acres of land for the planting of sugar cane and cassava for biofuels. Villages were relocated, and a court case ended in judges ordering Htay Myint to pay $80 per acre of land confiscated, and $150 per house – a comparative pittance. According to Irrawaddy reporter Seamus Martov, “Yuzana’s land seizures directly impacted more than 10,000 people in the valley”. Other reports have claimed that Yuzana employees, many of whom were brought from outside Kachin state, thus denying the local population employment on their own land, were given weapons training.

Earlier this week around 5,000 farmers from the region penned a letter for visiting US President Barrack Obama asking the US government to stop funding “a sham tiger reserve that is being used as a front to protect military crony business interests”.

“American donors should be supporting projects which empower local people instead of projects shielding military cronies under the guise of environmental protection,” said Seng Mai of the Kachin Development Networking Group in a press release. Bauk Ja also says that the creation of the reserve allowed the government to extend its reach into an area that was until then only nominally under state control.

In 2010, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which helped establish the reserve, released a report estimating that there were only 50 tigers left in Hukawng (out of a total global population of around 3,500). Other rare animals, including clouded leopards and Asian bears, are also feared to be in decline. Now, however, according to local animal trackers who spoke with Bauk Ja, no tiger paw prints have been seen for several years.

U.S. President Barack Obama is presented with flowers as he and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, arrive at Yangon International Airport in Yangon, Burma, on Air Force One, Monday. Pic: AP.

The US will take credit for the reforms under way in Burma, and some of this is deserved – from the mid-1990s onwards they have been the most vocal critic of the various regimes that ruled Burma, and despite its major shortcomings, the reach of Washington’s sanctions far surpassed that of the EU’s. After President Thein Sein’s ascendance to top office in early 2011, the cautious and skeptical approach to Burma from the US was welcomed.

But where baby steps were once the order of the day, Washington has now taken a leap. Obama is reportedly due to strike a balance between praise and pressure, something that the realpolitik faction of his administration will celebrate, but others are less enthused: it was only a year ago that US officials said military relations could only develop if the Burmese army was held accountable for its actions, yet despite it remaining the one institution not touched by the reform process, the US has already extended a hand in its direction.

The continued incarceration of political prisoners – whose release was another criteria for developing relations set by the US – should similarly provoke concern about how far exactly Naypyidaw is willing to push the transition to democracy, and whether the US will continue to court Thein Sein if they remain in prison. Obama had said in his 2009 Nobel acceptance speech that “there must be consequences” for the actions of the Burmese regime. The audience at his speech today at Rangoon University would do well to clarify this point.

Obama comes only a week after a top Burmese official brazenly acknowledged that his country may never become a functioning democracy. Deputy defense minister Aung Thaw told Reuters that the military has no plans to lessen its clout in parliament (currently a quarter of seats are occupied by military officials who were appointed by the president, not elected by Burmese). “The Defense Services are pro-actively participating in the process [of democratic transition],” he said, without irony.

With that, Burma’s transition could mirror aspects of Cambodia’s, the next stop on Obama’s tour. Despite Hun Sen remaining firmly in his autocratic seat, with his military still a powerful tool for oppression against the opposition, the US long ago resumed bilateral relations and softened its vocal criticism. Cambodia should provide a telling example of how low the bar needs to be set in Burma.

Obama’s visit may then carry one of two results. His administration will hope that the visit of a US president amid strengthening ties with the government in Burma will propel reforms. Already it has allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to resume prison visits – a promising development that has struggled to feature on the radar amid the Obama hype – and there are reports that political prisoners were among the additional 66 released this morning. The rest remain political bargaining chips.

These small steps, one hopes, will continue apace. He could also put substantial pressure on Thein Sein to end attacks on ethnic groups and make a real stab at peace in the restive Arakan state, but the proof will be in the results. “Obama’s success in securing tangible commitments on human rights, not his mere presence in the country, is crucial for promoting genuine and lasting reform,” says Brad Adams from Human Rights Watch

But evidence from elsewhere in the world is that Washington’s criteria for strengthening relations is just too weak. “The US is more worried about China and North Korea than democracy and human rights in Burma,” long-time Burma journalist Bertil Lintner said last year. “Those issues are just for public consumption, and to make [their approaches to the government] more acceptable to Congress.” The risk with Burma is that oppression of the political opposition, which continues despite the country’s supposed new dawn, will become further institutionalised as the government receives stronger endorsement from the west. Where once power was very raw in Burma, it now hides behind a veneer of legitimacy – the long-term ramifications of this should be cause for concern for Obama.

An armed police officer guards as Muslim refugees stand behind him at a refugee camp in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State, western Burma. Pic: AP.

Earlier this month a group of monks in Sittwe, the Arakan state capital, released a statement calling for Arakanese to “expose sympathisers of Bengali Kalars [a derogatory term for Rohingya] as national traitors along with photos and spread the information to every township”. A similar message was circulated by monks in Karen state, in eastern Burma, which has a far smaller population of Muslims. It said that anyone who interacted with Muslims – marry, trade with, and so on – would receive “critical punishment”.

It is becoming increasingly hard to dismiss the violence as something local to western Burma. People in Arakan state appear eager to publicise that they are not Muslim: “Hindu boys we met working in the market had a tag hanging around their neck claiming they are Hindu with their home address (issued and signed by the ward leader), and they are not even full citizens,” a foreign NGO worker said of a recent visit to Sittwe in Arakan state.

I had some interesting correspondence recently with another Thailand-based NGO worker who traveled to Bangladesh in late October and met with journalists – Arakanese, Rohingya, and Bangladeshi –  and government officials. Below are some excerpts.

“Both Rohingya and Arakanese reporters gave current anecdotes about small groups on the ground (in plain clothes), operating with impunity by authorities, actively trying to stir up religious conflict. They told detailed stories of daylight attacks on religious buildings, including brazenly burning the Kuran and attacking temples and mosques.

“The Arakanese reporters seem nervous to write about these things as they fear attacks by their own people, but admitted that the authorities, especially the army, are openly trying to organise anti-Muslim activities and it is getting worse. They felt that many Arakanese leaders seem reluctant to carry out these activities again because of the damage they have already suffered and therefore the Tatmadaw [Burma army] is having to take even more aggressive measures to fuel this religious war.”

The NGO worker, who doesn’t want to be named, also recounted discrimination experienced by colleagues in Karen and Karenni state in October.

“Recently several of our partners went back into Karen and Karenni state to renew their Burmese ID’s. In two separate cases, in two separate areas, they said the question asked at the government office was whether they are Muslim. Also, after they “proved” they were not, the authorities explained they are now making a list of all Muslims in their areas. One office official said the list was being prepared to disenfranchise Muslims there.”

To be sure, a lot of the stories being circulated are anecdotal, but put together, it suggests an evolution of this conflict that should be of pressing concern to all stakeholders. Both sides have committee grave abuses, but attempts so far at reconciliation seem to be hitting a brick wall. If it is true however that a belief system, rather than an ethnicity, is now being targeted, then the ramifications could be far-reaching.

It’s easy for the international community to consider each battle an isolated event – that means they can avoid acknowledgement of the role that the government’s ultra-nationalist mentality has played in all this, and thus continue to fawn over Thein Sein and his cabinet. But it is the government that continues to attack Kachin civilians in the north, and which is rallying Burmese to demand deportation, and worse, of the Rohingya (and as of two days ago, Kaman Muslim) in the west.

So in that context, where all the evidence points to a deeply unstable situation with regards to Burma’s many ethnic minority populations, the UN’s call this week for work to begin on planning the repatriating of some 150,000 Karen from camps in Thailand is alarming. (Ironically, it’s the same figure that OCHA now counts as displaced in Kachin and Arakan).

A house is seen engulfed in flames in Sittwe, Burma last month during sectarian violence involving Rohingyas and Arakan Buddhists. Pic: AP.

First up, Karen state itself remains a conflict zone, although fighting has dramatically reduced since a nominal ceasefire was signed with the Karen National Union (KNU) earlier this year. Both the Free Burma Rangers and Karen Human Rights Group, who know the situation there inside out, have said recently that Burmese troops continue to supply their camps with weaponry and personnel. All the talk of an end to fighting in Karen state should be contrasted with the modern-day reality of life in Kachin state: the period following the signing of a 1994 ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Army was marked by greater militarization of the state than had occurred during the war, and look how well that’s now served the Burmese army.

The KNU is currently amid a crisis, having dismissed three top figures due to their warming relations with the government. The group is split into two factions, thus meaning the prospect of lasting peace in Karen state is now further away than six months ago. Is the UN fully aware of this, and the fragile situation the refugees will return to? Landmines still litter the landscape, and Burmese troops, part of an institution whose actions elsewhere in the country remain as debased as they were in Burma’s darkest days, continue to roam.

Karen state might have seen a reduction in fighting, but what’s key to this saga is that the mindset of the army, which is taught to consider ethnic minorities as subhuman, remains firmly intact. Events elsewhere in the country should be seen as the manifestation of a mentality that can surface anywhere in Burma, at any time, and which political reforms alone won’t break.

To be sure, the UN will have been pressured by the Thais to do something with the refugees. Norway too, with its Myanmar Peace Support Initiative, has eagerly sought to make Karen state habitable for returnees, and thus has added a glean to a situation that probably doesn’t deserve it.

James Lynch, from the UN refugee agency, had acknowledged that, “Conditions for the repatriation may not be in place,” and cited landmines, shelters and a lack of a peace agreement among the region’s many ethnic groups, according to the Bangkok Post. “But we still should think about the preparations.”

It’s a strange thing for the same person considering the return of thousands of refugees to then admit the dangers of carrying through with repatriation.

Burma President Thein Sein, left, shakes hands with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair during their meeting at Presidential house in Naypyitaw, Saturday. Pic: AP.

The New Light of Myanmar said Blair had “led a delegation” to Burma, and spoke with lower house speaker Shwe Mann. It said they discussed  “cooperation in bilateral ties” and parliamentary affairs. A British embassy spokesperson told me he was there on behalf of The Office of Tony Blair, an umbrella group of foundations – inter-faith, sports, etc – and governance initiatives that he started up after leaving office. The spokesperson said only that he had “productive discussions about the reform process”.

Blair is a controversial presence in many parts of the world, but appears to have retained a quasi-diplomatic role for Britain – Xinhua said of a visit to Vietnam prior to Burma that Blair’s talks with PM Dung contributed “to strengthening the strategic partnership between the two countries.

“Tony Blair, for his part, expressed his willingness to share experiences with Vietnam in restructuring economy, attracting investment, tackling climate change, protecting environment and promoting private-public partnership (PPP),” said Xinhua.

Whether the same topics were broached in Burma is unclear – the New Light, which dedicates the majority of its articles to listing ministers, leaving scant room for juicy details, said that Thein Sein and Blair discussed “cooperation in securing greater development in education, health and human resource sectors”.

Mark Farmaner at Burma Campaign UK wrote in an email however that the visit was lacking in many respects. “Blair doesn’t seem to have bothered to meet any grassroots or human rights groups before meeting Thein Sein and government representatives.” He said also that the group hoped Blair would be there “on behalf of his Faith Foundation, perhaps in response to the recent anti-Muslim and anti Rohingya nationalism from some Burmese Buddhists. However, he hasn’t met with any Rohingya representatives before meeting the government or others, which seems strange.”

A mediation role in the Rohingya crisis seems highly unlikely, however, and is sure to elicit a fierce reaction given his bloody legacy in the Arab world, where he remains deeply unpopular. Desmond Tutu, a friend of Suu Kyi’s, has publicly stated that Blair should face trial over the Iraq invasion.

It’ll be interesting to learn what exactly his intentions are in Burma. Since leaving office, he has set up a business consultancy firm, Tony Blair Consulting, and has reportedly earned some $100 million in various roles as consultant and business adviser to, among others, JP Morgan. What his motives are for courting Burma’s leaders are unclear, for as Farmaner notes, “Prime Minister Tony Blair showed little interest in Burma”. He had promised to introduce tougher sanctions when campaigning for office, but backtracked once in government. “The most we got was a bland three line statement on Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday,” says Farmaner.

AHRC notes in its report that photographs taken by the family of Myo Myint Swe’s body “show that the right cheek and forehead … are heavily bruised and swollen, as is the left jaw and lower cheek. The neck of the deceased is black with bruising, and scars and bruises are obvious on his shoulders and back.” An image carried on their website shows his swollen shins black with bruising, likely as a result of bamboo being rubbed forcefully up and down his shins – common practice during police interrogation.

Police blamed his death on an illness contracted whilst in custody, while a post-mortem concluded it was a heart attack. The family are launching a lawsuit, but authorities remain stubborn – during a court inquest, “it was registered as a simple death, not as a murder,” says AHRC.

“When the death inquest hearing was being held, Daw Sein Sein [Myo Myint Swe’s mother] also saw that the photographs of the deceased that the police submitted to court looked nothing like those that she had seen, and that they had evidently been modified with a computer program to conceal the scars and wounds on the dead body that can be clearly seen in the original photos.”

Seemingly knee-jerk arrests, like that of Myo Myint Swe, are common in Burma. Authorities are made to deliver quick results regardless of the evidence. This is for two reasons: one is that public anger at a societal affront such as murder can whip up very quickly and get out of hand; another is that Burma’s security system is a vertically integrated one in which those at the top end of the hierarchy demand evidence of a rapid response from those lower down. This means that, as far as local police are concerned, the need for any arrest is far greater than the need for the right arrest.

The results of this can be horrendous, with innocent people often spending years as police pawns, moving from station to station or prison to prison in order to satisfy the demand for a result. Many thus live out years in jail clueless as to why they are there.

Although we’ll never know whether Myo Myint Swe played any part in the flower seller’s murder, he could well have been a victim of this charade, thus making his fate doubly tragic. The use of torture is well documented in Burma, but global attention is largely focused on torture of the political opposition – few spare a thought for the bystander dumped into the dark and corrupt hole that is Burma’s legal system. Observers often argue that the country cannot become a functioning democracy until the dictatorial mentality that creates this cold, hard void between authority and civilian is eroded, and rightly so.

Aung San Suu Kyi pictured during her vist to Thailand in May. Pic: AP.

Although acknowledging the criticism she has received for refusing to call out the Burmese army’s ongoing attacks on Kachin civilians, Suu Kyi said on Sunday that the silence was justified through “not [wanting] to add fire to any side of the conflict.” Criticising the military would exacerbate fighting, she thinks. According to The Irrawaddy, she went on to say that solving the conflict “means being calm and considering the roots of the problem, instead of pointing fingers and blaming each other”.

Suu Kyi’s apparent reluctance to tackle Burma’s “ethnic problem” – which has at its core the inability of the government (and some Burmese) to co-exist harmoniously with ethnic minorities – has long been a sticking point for democracy campaigners and ethnic leaders, but now with Suu Kyi in parliament, the anger at her reluctance to speak out is rising.

Hkun Htun Oo, the ethnic Shan leader last week in the US to receive a Democracy Award, said in Washington that she had been “neutralized” by the government and therefore “can no longer speak for the rights of the people”. He feels she has compromised her ability to stand up for all citizens of Burma in order to enter parliament. Others take this further, by claiming her political platform allows her to protect the Burman majority, but not the 40 percent of the country made up of minority populations.

This debate came to the fore in the wake of rioting between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya in June. The same questions were asked of her silence over the suffering of the Rohingya: is she prioritizing her future political career over the notions of democracy and equal rights for all that have guided her struggle since 1988? And if so, should she be called out for it, despite so many admirers of the Nobel Laureate appearing loath to do?

DVB today quoted Benedict Rogers, from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, who argues that “too much public criticism of her is not necessarily helpful”. He says instead that “it is more useful to express concerns privately and constructively.” But that stance only works if she does interact regularly with groups and individuals who are willing to raise these issues to the prominence they deserve, given the future ramifications of not resolving the Kachin and Rohingya crises. Instead however, her rise to parliament carries the risk of neglecting the grassroots movements’ that were so key to Burma’s development, something that so many activists-cum-politicians forced into a position of compromise are wont to do.

What won’t have helped is Suu Kyi’s apparent dismissal of voices that would assert a moral need to speak as more important than the political costs of doing so. In a surprise comment last week that epitomizes more than anything the transformation she has undergone over the past year, she said: “I don’t believe in professional dissidents. I think it’s just a phase, like adolescence.”

Take that how you will, but it’s an attitude that could well alienate many supporters, and even the veteran activists of the 88 Generation who, decades after adolescence, continue in their role as dissidents. Political oppression in Burma has not stopped, and thus dissent remains a key weapon. Now out of house arrest and securely in parliament, is Suu Kyi suggesting that criticism of the quasi-military government is both wrong and naïve? It would appear so.

Contrast this, and her refusal to speak out on the Kachin and Rohingya, with comments made regarding the jailed Pussy Riot activist singers in Russia. At an Amnesty International event in the US on Thursday, she called for their release, stating that “governments must be prepared to take criticism.” It paints a confusing picture, not least because around the same time, police were arresting Kachin protestors (a.k.a., dissidents) in Rangoon who were demanding the army cease operations in the north. One angry commenter on Facebook questioned whether she thought Pussy Riot “more important than minority suffering in burma”.

In another bizarre remark, she told students at Columbia University in New York at the weekend that she had a “soft spot” for Burma’s military because of the role of her father, independence hero General Aung San, in it. This is again likely to draw the ire of groups like the Kachin, who continue to flee attacks from troops and whose women continue to be systematically raped.

Has she then, as Burmese activist and academic Maung Zarni believes, “morphed into Naypyidaw’s most effective saleswoman and marketing agent”? She does appear to be following their lead, but as I have noted before, there may be a tactical side to it whereby she panders to both the government (re. Kachin) and Burmese public (re. Rohingya) in order to increase her chances of winning office in 2015. After that, the argument runs, she could really tackle these issues more substantially as Burma’s leader, rather than an MP.

Notwithstanding the obstacles in place to block her road to office, in the meantime blood continues to be shed in the ethnic regions, and dissidents continue to be jailed. These are issues that are fundamental to Burma’s trajectory from hereon out, and it’s right that Suu Kyi’s shifting stances on both subjects are scrutinized and called out when necessary, as any politician should be. She herself could suffer politically if she loses the trust, and therefore vote, of ethnic minorities. The Kachin and Rohingya protests that accompanied her visits to London and New York respectively signal that this is an increasingly likely prospect.

Burmese refugees pictured crossing the Thailand-Burma border. Pic: AP.

Thailand is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and has sparked anger several times in recent years with either threats to, or the actual forced return of, thousands of refugees to Karen state in eastern Burma. It also repatriated some 4,000 Hmong refugees to Laos in late 2009, despite warnings they would face persecution by the Laos government. Its refusal to sign refugee protocols makes it less susceptible to outside pressure, but it appears to be working in partnership with the Norwegian Peace Council to assess the Shan refugees’ willingness to go back – Norway will give this move a veneer of legitimacy, despite the reality of the situation.

Shan community groups said in a joint statement on Monday that “refugees in Koung Jor [camp in northern Thailand] told Norwegian representatives in July they did not want to go back to Mong Hta [site of return 20 miles inside the Shan border] due to fear of the Burma Army and other pro-government militias in the area, which is littered with land-mines.”

Those fears are very justified – despite a ceasefire being signed between the Burmese government and Shan State Army, tensions remain high as troops manoeuvre outside of agreed positions, and fighting continues on a sporadic basis. Moreover, government-aligned militias, who are often knee-deep in the drugs trade and active along the Thai-Burma border, are not party to the ceasefires. Abuse of civilians in Shan state was never just confined to government troops; militias were active contributors, and continue to be. Thailand appears to be acting on the basis that things are “better” than they were – while maybe true, they are by no means stable enough to return already vulnerable people, women and young children included.

Norway’s involvement in the ceasefire process in Burma has been controversial. Some see their pilot ‘peace initiative projects’ in the border regions as an economic bartering tool, that they are planting their flag early on in resource-rich zones by way of spearheading post-ceasefire development programmes. Others say it is a benevolent attempt to bring much-needed infrastructure to these regions. The jury remains out.

Oslo however currently has a team in the Koung Jor camp checking on whether the refugees have changed their minds in the past month. The refugees are better placed to gauge the situation in Shan state, given that the Norwegians have likely been garnering much of their information from propagandised Burmese government assessments. Thailand would do well to focus more attention on the opinions of the refugees, but history tells us this is an unlikely scenario.

The legality of returning refugees to a war zone remains a grey area – technically a country can repatriate people to areas of conflict, although components of the return may breach international law. China may have “[flouted] its international legal obligations”, as Human Rights Watch put it, when repatriating the Kachin refugees because it is a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention, while the same charge may not find sympathetic ears in Thailand.

That by no means puts Thailand in the clear. While it has generally held a more sympathetic policy towards refugees than many other regional countries, the possible return of the Shan refugees is a cynical one, and probably aimed at appeasing Naypyidaw. The Koung Jor community is a tiny burden on the Kingdom – it is a fraction of the size of the Karen border refugee communities, but also more invisible to international eyes, and thus easier to “move on”.

Despite a lengthy interest in Burma, Norway probably understands little of the changing day-to-day realities in Shan state. It knows little about the region, and its ‘peace initiative’, begun earlier this year, has focused largely on Karen state. As Sai Khur Hseng, of the Shan Sapawa Environmental Organisation, said in the statement yesterday, “The refugees must not be used as guinea-pigs to test out the peace process”.

At least half of the 16 clauses set about to stifle dissent – state policy “shall not be negatively criticised”, one reads. For all the hypocrisies and malleability that accompany use of the term, a ‘democracy’ is essentially open to divergent opinions – indeed that is how one is created and maintained. Disposing of this cornerstone is the first sign that dictatorial tendencies are emerging, despite the government claiming to be closing the door on that period.

The silencing of reportage on malpractices widely associated with the Burmese government is hidden behind the veil of alleged concerns over legitimacy: “Unless the source is reliable, matters relating to corruption, illicit drugs manufacturing and trading, forced labour, human trafficking, child soldiers, etc. shall not be reported.”

It will ultimately be the government who decides the credibility of the source; the same government that has spent years attempting to discredit the findings of Human Rights Watch et al and imprisoning local human rights monitors. President Thein Sein’s administration is right to demand proper conduct in reporting, but it is the wrong body to be determining the nature of that conduct.

It even goes so far as to ban criticism of the government’s economic policy, which absolutely demands debate given its track record in that department. The realm of economic policy stretches out to the impacts of foreign investment, for example, which is set to grow in the coming years and, unless closely monitored (as well as criticised), could easily be a repeat of a very destructive history.  The government however knows the fragile nature of the Burma’s economic future, and indeed its past – the uprisings of 1988 and 2007 were essentially protests against woeful economic decisions, and any repeat of this during the fragile transitional period would be very unsettling for the government and its allied elites who hold tremendous personal wealth.

In many senses it is good that editors no longer have to check everything with the censor board prior to printing – it will speed the process up, and for the first time in decades, allow news to be what it should be. The new rules are not wholly negative, nor do they outwardly bar journalists from highlighting more benign malpractices that still would’ve been unthinkable a year ago. There is also the newfound ability of non-state media to operate openly in Burma.

Thomas Kean, editor of the English-language edition of The Myanmar Times, wrote in an email: “One thing I think people are overlooking is that, from an editor’s perspective, this is just going to make life a lot easier and we’ll be able to focus more energy on our output rather than wasting time with backup articles, censorship board deadlines, pages and pages of printouts, changing articles just before publication and so on. We’ll be able to better use the resources we have, which will have some benefits on the quality of the end product.”

Yet with this kind of self-censorship being required of journalists anyway, the censor board is made effectively redundant and a constricted media sphere hidden behind the veneer of tentative press freedom is set to be cemented well into the future.

It’s refreshing to know however that Burma’s rulers haven’t lost their penchant for the far-fetched that kept us skimming through the New Light of Myanmar year after year in search of Than Shwe’s latest hat trick of holes-in-one or phantom hospital patients. One clause in the censorship rulings reads: “In stories of mystery like ghosts, barren land demons [a type of spirit in Burmese lore], desiccated foetus and treasure trove history, illogical things that may mislead children shall not be written,” reads one ruling on the list of censorship rules. Let’s not forget that senior members of the Thein Sein administration, notably the man himself, have held posts in previous governments that relied on the supernatural to guide key areas of policy.

Burma vice-president Tin Aung Myint Oo. Pic: AP.

Rumours have circulated that Shwe Mann, the powerful lower house speaker, could take his position. He is undoubtedly one of the more progressive voices in Burmese politics. Writing on the Democratic Voice of Burma website in March, David Stout predicted a “political harvest” in the 2015 general elections for the likes of Shwe Mann and Railway Minister Aung Min, who have played key roles in much of the reform process – they are the quiet operators in a narrative usually dominated by President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi.

…if the country is serious about becoming more democratic, certainly Shwe Mann and Aung Min are making a case that they have the ability to get things done – political capital that can be cashed in if they’re willing and remain able.

With a potentially empty spot in the speaker’s chair, it would make sense for the government to elevate Suu Kyi to that position. If indeed it is weeding out the hardliners for more reformist voices, then they may welcome her input, not to mention the cosmetic boost it would give Thein Sein et al. Note however that no mention has been made of the likes of Htay Oo, the influential, ultra-conservative agriculture minister – he and other less prominent, but equally hawkish, ministers may keep their positions.

Let’s not leap to conclusions about the wider impact this reshuffle would have. “The NLD’s landslide victory in the April 1 by-election will not affect Burma’s fundamental power structure with the military at its apex,” writes Burma expert, Bertil Lintner. “And there are three more years to go till the next election, a time which the military can use to manipulate and neutralise the opposition — an art that the military has been extremely skilled at since it first seized power in a coup d’etat in 1962.”

The question of an overhaul of the bogus 2008 constitution will be on everyone’s lips – it’s a mammoth task that will need a re-engineering of the voting system in parliament, and indeed the support of the hundreds of either military or military-oriented MPs. (There’s a brief outline of the hurdles needed overcoming in the fifth paragraph of this post.)

Janet Benshoof, head of the Global Justice Centre, sees a key problem in the constitution’s making of the military as “a separate, legally autonomous entity, outside of and supreme over the sovereign state … All military affairs, civil or criminal, are under the exclusive control of the commander-in-chief. No law applies to the commander-in-chief, not the constitution or any rules spanning from controlling finances to nuclear development.”

It is, she argues, effectively a “law free zone” for the military. Lintner echoes this: “Without substantial constitutional reform — which seems almost impossible — Burma cannot break decades-long of stifling military rule and move forward to achieve real democracy.”

This isn’t accepted by all, however. Elliott Prasse-Freeman, at Harvard University’s Carr Centre for Human Rights, wrote in an email last year that this stance on Burma’s constitution doesn’t acknowledge that politics is “animated by struggles within an architecture of laws, statutes and norms, rather than being perfectly correspondent to those frameworks.

In a country like Burma with no lived political history of rights (or in this case Western-derived conceptions of procedurally animated and legally enforced “legitimacy”), politics is performed and made real through different mechanisms.

The government reshuffle will no doubt trigger a challenge to the constitution – Suu Kyi herself has suggested she will approach the matter soon – but whether it will be successful in changing it remains to be seen. Indeed, as Prasse-Freeman argues, failure via the parliamentary route may not spell the end of a nascent democratic transition – indeed he presents a renewed challenge for civil society, whose importance will grow in tandem with political developments in Burma.