You’d think some lessons might have been learned in the intervening period, but alas, no. Immediately after Aung San Suu Kyi’s by-election victory on 1 April, the government began load shedding, and buildings in Rangoon were put on electricity rotas that for many meant an evening of darkness, every other day. The timing may have been deliberate: “People get sullen and don’t want to talk about politics in the dark,” quipped a Burmese friend.

But that constant denial of light creates a pressure cooker of sorts, and over the weekend up to 1,000 residents of Mandalay took to the streets in the biggest protest in Burma since 2007 (DVB reports that some have subsequently been arrested). “We’ve been putting up with this [power shortages] for three months now,” Ko Ko Lay, one of the protesters, told The Irrawaddy. Burma’s second city has had to make do with around four hours of electricity per day. “This has nothing to do with politics. We just want our basic needs met.”

While that may be so, there is historically a political dimension to the power shortages: during the years of outwardly military rule, it was used as a tool of pacification – for anyone who has experienced lengthy blackouts, it makes any sort of organising vastly more difficult (while, of course, helping to enrich the generals, who were known to siphon profits from energy sales into private offshore accounts). Back then, the likelihood of people openly reacting was slim (that the September 2007 protests actually happened, rather than merely the threat of them erupting, took everyone by surprise), but that is gradually changing, as the Mandalay protests show.

What angers Burmese is the enormous energy wealth the country has, and the interest from abroad it attracts. Its proven gas reserves are ranked at around 40^th in the world, but much of the country has not been properly explored, and its potential is vast. Hydropower is another booming sector, particularly so given the topography of the mountainous border regions in the north and east. Like gas, however, the overwhelming majority of output is sold to neighbouring countries, particularly, China, Thailand and India – 75 percent of the population cannot access regular power supplies.

That makes statements such as those that appeared in state media today incredibly aggravating. “As production exceeded consumption in this season, enough electricity could be distributed to the people, factories, workshops and businesses,” said a statement by the power ministry in the New Light of Myanmar. No it couldn’t.

The blame for shortages lies squarely at the feet of the government – no country so rich in energy should have a population bereft of round-the-clock electricity (most Burmese cannot afford the imported diesel used to power generators during blackouts, largely on account of the fact that it is sold for inflated prices on the black market). But it stills tries to shirk responsibility – just last week, it pinned the blame for electricity shortages across the country on attacks by Kachin rebels on sections of a power grid in Shan state.

Ducking responsibility will only anger Burmese more, at a time when their confidence at speaking out is growing bolder. Foreign interest in the country’s energy sector is increasing in the wake of suspended EU and US sanctions, but the question of ethical investment must now also stretch to the equal distribution of power (in both its manifestations).

The denial of land rights is up there with the worst forms of human rights abuses in the country, but lacks the dramatic glint that draws international attention to the physical assaults on civilians by the Burmese government. It may be because of this that Naypyidaw is pushing ahead with a Land Act that does very little to prevent future theft of land, either due to weak enforcement, or because the Act itself is so flimsy.

Some important coverage of the issue came out this weekend that international lobbyists vying for entry to Burma should take particular note of. “While foreign governments heap praise on the Burmese government’s liberal tilt, land theft appears to be increasing as state agencies and powerfully placed domestic firms position themselves to welcome foreign investment,” wrote William Boot in The Irrawaddy.

He likens rule of law in Burma, even in the current ‘reform’ era, to 12th Century Europe: “In medieval Europe, land ownership was determined by sharp swords and private armies. In present-day Burma, powerful businesses linked to the army do much the same.”

That sentiment is echoed in a key 2009 text, ‘Housing, Land and Property Rights in Burma: The Current Legal Framework’, which states: “… successive military regimes have perpetuated an almost feudal governance system – where the population is seen as a resource at the disposal of the rulers – that is in many respects unchanged since pre-colonial times.”

The Land Act will help to consolidate the millions of acres of confiscated land across Burma in the hands of private business (i.e. those who tasked Burmese troops with stealing it). Civil society groups have vehemently attacked the bill, and small changes have been made, but its effect remains largely the same.

Take the current situation in Rangoon’s Mingalardon township for example, where an ownership dispute has resurfaced between farmers and construction giant, Zaykaba (ironically owned by MP, Khin Shwe). “In a dispute that dates back to early 2010, farmers in Shwenanthar village allege Zaykabar tricked them into giving up land tenure rights to about 800 acres that the company plans to use to build an industrial zone,” says the Myanmar Times.

Bulldozing of the farmland has recommenced as of last week, and soldiers are blocking the farmers from intervening. One local official told Myanmar Times that he had no power to stop the company. “Officials gave two official notices to Zaykabar to stop implementing Industrial Zone 4. But they didn’t obey them.”

The fracas demonstrates that current laws do little to protect small landowners. Indeed, as the Irrawaddy says, “Land confiscation is being reported near the south coast, in the Rangoon region, around Mandalay and in northern areas close to the border with China.”

The practice continues to be rife, but is still treated as a sideline issue in Burma. Why might this be so?

“The primary reason for this is that, first of all, people can do very little about it externally or internally, so there’s not a huge amount of legal procedures one can pursue,” Leckie told me in an interview several years ago.

“The second issue is that the vast majority of land is controlled by the state, which significantly undermines the possibility of achieving a great deal when one looks to pursue justice on land disputes. Thirdly, it’s almost so ubiquitous, the problem is so huge, that people are deterred and instead focus on areas that are simpler to deal with.”

Pic: AP.

The roughly 1,500 troops under Na Kham Mwe’s command operate unofficial checkpoints along the border, and control a small amount of cross-border trade to and from Thailand. Chalerm accuses the leader of trafficking drugs into Thailand, something he denies (he has on several occasions invited both Thai and US drugs’ officials to inspect his territory).

The charges are somewhat perplexing, given that they stem from a 2003 incident that allegedly links Na Kham Mwe to a drugs bust. Accounts of the bust vary – some claim an unknown woman crossing into Thailand was found with significant quantities of methamphetamine, which she told police was sourced from the DKBA, while others claim it was a family member who was arrested.

As the Irrawaddy points out, however, Thailand’s drugs agency appears to be “working on the assumption that [he] was the leader of the DKBA at that time” whereas in fact he was a commander of one of many factions that existed prior to the 2010 split. The ostensible head of the DKBA during its pro-government years, Chit Thu, is now firmly allied to the Burmese government, and heads one of its border militias north of Mae Sot. Thailand has not mentioned him at all.

Na Kham Mwe himself has asked why no attempt was made to arrest him when the charges first surfaced in 2003 (the DKBA would have frequently traveled to Thailand for meetings with local Thai officials). No one seems to know, and it’s easy to fall into conspiratorial musings, but it smacks of a politically-driven manhunt.

One approach to this is that the Burmese government may have requested Thailand’s help in squeezing the ethnic armies along the border that are refusing to sign ceasefires (the DKBA being one of the remaining few), and a drugs pretext would generate the most support from Thai law enforcement officials and politicians now saddling up closer to the Burmese government (Chalerm has something of a platform to operate from with the 2003 listing). Moreover, while Thailand in the past used border groups as a buffer against its traditional enemy, the Burmese army, the days of needing to keep Burma at arms length are fading, and with it the incentive to support and allow border armies to flourish.

A second is that Thailand is trying to reassert an anti-drugs crusade in the wake of Yingluck’s rise to power last year (and Thaksin’s impending return). Directing attention towards Na Kham Mwe could divert from failures elsewhere (namely Shan druglord Naw Kham, whose close relations with the Thai military resulted in the deaths of 13 Chinese soldiers).

Whether Na Kham Mwe is indeed involved in drugs is hard to tell, and he may well be. Narcotics do cross the Karen state border with Thailand, although quantities pale in comparison with those coming from Shan state. Like other ethnic armies, both pro-government and opposition, he may indeed levy a tax on traffickers (although this practice is normally reserved for ‘civilian’ opium growers and producers; methamphetamine, Burma’s most lucrative black-market export, is manufactured and distributed within and by tightly controlled rackets, and it’s government-allied cliques that usually control outflows).

One should also bear in mind the carelessness with which Chalerm’s de facto boss, former Thai PM Thaksin Sinawatra, labeled and executed suspected drug traffickers (and users) in the early 2000s, often on highly spurious charges (and ones that were sometimes politically-motivated, especially in the case of finding an excuse to send more troops into the insurgency-plagued south).

If Thailand is serious about the charges, then a thorough inspection of Na Kham Mwe’s territory will take place. One gets the feeling however that Burmese troops, feeding off Thai encouragement and intelligence (Thai army and police have long been in cahoots with Burmese ethnic armies) may soon close in on the leader, which is likely to result in a very bloody battle.

Military representatives attend a regular session of Burma's parliament. Despite appearances, they may not be as unified as they'd lead us to believe. Pic: AP.

That faction isn’t as tight as some may think: earlier this year the pre-appointed military MPs, who make up a quarter of seats, broke rank and did not vote as a bloc on a number of issues, a move that surprised those who thought their presence was an effort to create some sort of multi-headed parliamentary whip for Burma’s elite.

Analyst Min Zin wrote a strong piece in Foreign Policy Magazine earlier this week that highlights a candidness (rhetorically at least) among the military MPs when dealing with foreign dignitaries that many hadn’t expected. This, he suggests, is likely aimed at encouraging the west to continue its courting of Burma’s government.

“Whenever senior U.S. officials meet a Burmese military chief or defense minister and raise the issue of human rights violations committed by the army in ethnic areas, the military doesn’t deny it,” he quotes a US source as saying. “They admit that things are not very pretty on the ground, and ask for U.S. assistance, including training for the Tatmadaw [Burma army] officers.”

The self-serving element is no doubt the driving force behind the changing attitude (at least for those who consider Burma’s reform programme a means for the elite to hold onto power), but it does mean that Suu Kyi and the NLD (and the scores of opposition/third force MPs who have been forgotten over the past six months) has something to work with.

Min Zin cautions, however: “This toleration [of the reforms] will likely continue so long as the reform process does not challenge the military’s veto-wielding political supremacy and economic interests.”

This is a key point to raise – at what point will enough be enough for the elite (i.e. those who have profited from military rule)? When western governments talk about taking things step by step, the general understanding is that approaches to the government must be done cautiously so as not to jump the gun and about-face prematurely. But it must also not push for a change so rapid that it frightens the powerful (the business-military-political nexus), who then close ranks around their own interests.

For all the talk of corruption and debasement, Burma’s army is actually a rather complicated beast. Abuse is institutionalised, few would doubt that, but its make-up does give cause for hope in that it comprises two factions: those who saw entrance to the military as a means to plunder the country, and those who joined for their own survival (i.e. through strategic, greed-driven choice, or through force). Both sides are present in parliament, and it is the latter that Suu Kyi et al must focus their energy on – they will be more flexible, more likely to accommodate change, and if she can draw them towards the light, then she can start to develop a more progressive and coordinated voice in parliament.

Min Zin says that the reshuffle of military MPs, seen by many as a means to consolidate a stronger anti-Suu Kyi faction, in fact shows it is attaching importance to parliament as “more than a rubber-stamp leglisature that simply endorses decisions made elsewhere”, and with this we may (but, indeed, may not) actually see more wholesome debate as both sides work to engineer their own futures.

Burma refugees, with their belongings, walk on a street to a pier in Mae Sot, Thailand after being displaced by fighting in 2010. Pic: AP.

The chief interlocutor between the government and rebels, Railway Minister Aung Min, is claimed to have told the Karenni army that repatriation may begin by the start of the rainy season, around June. It would include the 150,000 living in camps in Thailand, and the more than half a million displaced inside Burma.

Aung Min happens to have just returned from Norway, which according to various reports is taking the lead in channeling $100 million-plus towards a ‘peace fund’ for the border regions in Burma – this will include aiding repatriation and clearance of landmines. The latter issue is key, given that more than six decades of conflict have left the countryside littered with hidden deathtraps.

But even if the mines disappear, how confident can we be that the ceasefires, very much at an embryonic stage right now (and clearly fragile, given that sporadic fighting continues), will hold out? And will the abuses of civilians by Burmese troops that caused the various exoduses end, even if fighting ceases?

The military has been conspicuously absent from the wider picture of reform in Burma. The political openings have to an extent served to distract from the fact that business as usual continues in the border regions, especially now in Kachin state. David Mathieson, Human Rights Watch’s Burma expert, thinks that changing the mindset of the military, which has “institutional disdain for ordinary people”, will be a slow and complicated process – until it is achieved, civilians remain at substantial risk.

“It [reforming the military] will also require constitutional reforms, to remove the immunity from civilian prosecution that the military enjoys, and which does nothing to address their entitlement to abusive behavior,” he said in an interview several weeks ago. “There also needs to be a complete overhaul of military training, with international humanitarian law becoming a cornerstone of military culture and the rules of engagement.”

But there is an urgency in Naypyidaw to see the refugees returned – like the nearly 1,000 political prisoners, they remain a blot on a grisly record that is it attempting to cast into history. Therefore it’s worth being very skeptical about the government’s claims of looming “peace” in the border regions; rather, it’s safer to consider the rhetoric coming from Aung Min et al as something of a sales pitch to the international community, and consequently we should approach with great caution the proclamation that the environment is safe enough for refugees to return.

One should also be wary of Norway’s involvement. With Oslo having made clear it wants access to Burma’s natural resources, many of which lie in or near to conflict zones, there may be truth to allegations that it is attempting to “buy” its way in to the region by offering incentives to ethnic armies to lay down arms, after which it will hurriedly manufacture an environment that is acceptable for investment (lobbying groups would cry foul were Norway to start mining the countryside while its inhabitants remain exiled).

There are some promising signs, however, including the decision to allow the International Labour Organisation access to conflict zones, where they can monitor forced labour and conscription. But as with everything in Burma, it’s worth carefully contrasting the words of the government against the reality on the ground.

US and EU leaders risk supporting an entity glaringly absent from Burma’s wider picture of reform, the military. Pic: AP.

With as yet little pressure from international business lobbies on how the government will spend the money it gains from foreign investment, there’s a substantial risk that overseas companies moving into Burma will directly support the army (which, with no external enemies, uses its hardware to crush internal dissent).

While this has long been the case – a significant portion of the revenue from gas sales has gone to the military-owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings – this financing will rise dramatically over the coming years as more countries target Burma’s resources.

Speaking on the lawn of Aung San Suu Kyi’s home in Rangoon last week, British PM David Cameron said that all EU sanctions on Burma, bar the arms embargo, should be dropped as a reward for recent reforms (the EU is due to announce its decision on sanctions on 23 April). What Cameron fails to realise however is the opaque web of transactions that allows (often even the most superficially benign) foreign investors to fund the army – maintaining the arms embargo, while talking up the benefits of investment, thus allows the EU to project an image of concern for democracy and human rights all the while throwing money at certain sectors of the economy that provide plunder for the army.

While one factor that helped the junta to siphon money out of the state budget – the dual exchange rate (which for years allowed the former junta to get away with pocketing $9 billion from the Chevron and Total-run energy projects in southern Burma) – has been streamlined, thus ostensibly allowing a greater degree of transparency regarding how much money goes to the government, endemic corruption remains a massive obstacle to human and economic development.

Arguing for a drastic overhaul of government spending, economist Sean Turnell says that, “Currently Burma spends less on these critical determinants of human capital [health and education] than any comparable nation, and it is among a tiny cohort of countries that spends more on its military than these two items combined.”

He says that certain western sanctions should be removed, including “the range of licences and taxes that are imposed upon Burma’s exporters, the prohibition against banks lending to farmers, the restrictions on telecommunications providers (which makes mobile phones in Burma amongst the most expensive in the world, despite the huge benefits these simple devices can yield in making for better living standards)…”

As I argued in last week’s post on sanctions, the eagerness of the US and EU to kick-start trade with Burma means they risk overlooking the sizeable grey areas that remain in the economy – unless Britain et al push for stronger regulations regarding what the government does with the money it is soon to earn from western business, then US and EU leaders will have to acknowledge that they are supporting an entity glaringly absent from Burma’s wider picture of reform – the military.

The predictability of the moves belies their controversy. The standard narrative accompanying the by-elections result, in which the opposition National League for Democracy appears to have won 43 out of the 45 seats up for grabs, is one of jubilation – Hillary Clinton says Washington will “embrace the progress,” while British FM William Hague speaks of “a very important moment of change”.

Judging by the scenes in Rangoon that accompanied the victory, that feeling is shared by many inside Burma. But some are still cautious: “Several Burmese officials have told me that by allowing the NLD to win a few seats—while ensuring that the military’s favored party still controls parliament—the government is betting that it has done just enough to normalize relations with the West, get aid and investment, and still remain essentially in control,” writes journalist Joshua Kurlantzick.

Its ‘normalisation’ programme (variously described as ‘reform’ or ‘transition’) has been hugely successful, as the mooted policy changes show. Whether the thaw in relations really reflects the facts on the ground however is becoming a topic of fiery debate – Human Rights Watch says: “The political opposition may have a monopoly on legitimacy in Burma, but the military still has something close to a monopoly on power – it runs the key ministries, does not answer to parliament or the courts, and can veto constitutional changes.”

Suu Kyi’s entrance to this arena no doubt confers legitimacy on it – she is fully aware of that – but her supporters see her role as one of pulling the MPs unsure of which direction to head in (towards President Thein Sein’s so-called ‘moderate’ faction, or the hawks loyal to the old guard) towards the light. She may well be able to influence this to an extent, but the task of getting enough people on side to drive real change – overhauling the judicial system and constitution, and reworking economic priorities so that more money goes to health and education, and less to the military – will take years, and more than just a majority in agreement, to achieve.

In that sense it does appear too early to drop sanctions (if it is a desire for trade with the west that has largely fuelled the reform, as is likely, then one can consider sanctions something of a success story). Military-owned companies, such as the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, still profit hugely from sales of gas (which will increase as sanctions loosen), while as yet there is no movement towards overhauling land ownership laws that grant the government complete control of (and which thus profits from) farmland, to the huge detriment of the 70 percent of Burma’s population that relies on agriculture as a primary source of income.

While more money should be channeled to some sectors, particularly aid (which, contrary to popular belief, has not been limited as a means to punish of the regime, but rather because the generals exercised complete control over the disbursement of assistance, and unsurprisingly pocketed much of it), the loosening of restrictions on investment before rules are enacted that would enable business to spur human development is ill-advised.

An election victory can rightly be considered a step in the right direction if it is followed by results that go beyond offering a cosmetic lift for Burma. Only time will tell, but the valuable prudence of western countries that for years helped to maintain pressure on the regime appears to be vanishing (a result of both the perceived changes here, and a reinvigorated push by the US and EU to tap markets in Southeast Asia), and long before its time.

Pic: AP.

At the time the organisation was attempting to gain access to rebel territory in the northern state where tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) had taken shelter. The crisis facing those displaced was considerable – the government had denied them international assistance, and they were forced to rely largely on locally-sourced food, medicine and blankets that were in short supply.

The reason for the UN’s inability to access the IDPs was never clarified by the government, but it likely stemmed from a fear in Naypyidaw that allowing the body to channel aid to rebel territory would be tantamount to supporting the Kachin rebels, which have been fighting government forces since June 2011. The refusal by the government was cynical and self-serving, but I and others felt that the UN also had a lot to answer for.

In reports issued by its aid wing, OCHA, and in interviews I conducted with staff in the country, there was a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the full extent of the crisis. This was likely due to concern that the UN going public with the fact that the majority of refugees had chosen to shelter in Kachin Independence Army territory and not government areas would annoy the government, as would clarity on the real situation in Burma’s north, and Naypyidaw might then restrict the UN’s work in the country.

The concerns are understandable, but they are no justification for the silence. The UN’s ambiguity dampened the urgency of the situation, and meant that local groups who could provide assistance were not being properly acknowledged and, crucially, their efforts were not supported.

Fast forward to now, and UN teams are en route to Kachin state to deliver their second convoy of aid, having been granted brief, limited access to the town of Laiza in December last year. Once again, however, celebrations should be tempered: as yet there is no sign that the aid effort will be a sustained one, and the government may well fall back on its age-old excuse of “security concerns” to block further convoys (as it’s done to block voting for looming by-elections in Kachin state).

The UN has grown slightly more verbose over the matter, requesting that aid deliveries be continued well into the future (OCHA says food insecurity could last until the end of 2013), but its public assessments fail to illuminate the real situation in the north (Human Rights Watch’s recent report paints a clearer picture of just how dire things are up there).

As the UN’s caginess continues, so the refugee crisis deteriorates. The tools of diplomacy can work with the Burmese government (as they eventually did with Cyclone Nargis in 2008) but the UN must be more frank about the limits of its work in a country like Burma. When that happens, external groups will begin to place more emphasis on supporting the local groups (often wrongly derided as politicised or ill-equipped) who can gain access to victims and provide the assistance they desperately need.

A vessel from China Shipping Line docks at Boaungkyaw Jetty in Yangon, Burma. Pic: AP.

Banks appear to be leading the way to Burma, their confidence boosted by a currency float and an apparent eagerness by the government to mend the country’s beleaguered economy. But it is the energy firms that are attracting the most attention, and campaigners have tried to highlight the risks of investing in the sector.

The Burma Environmental Working Group (BEWG) circulated a statement this week advising on the domestic benchmarks that need to be met before companies should consider signing contracts. Despite nascent reforms, Burma remains a “high risk investment environment,” the group warns. Paul Donowitz from EarthRights International has distilled the five benchmarks into short bullet points here, but BEWG makes some key demands that require greater attention.

Energy projects in Burma have historically been accompanied by widespread displacement and militarisation – the group says that parliament should work to “ensure that project security is a result of the rule of law and not regional militarization”.

Investment can catalyse human development in the long-neglected rural regions, but only if it takes place in a tightly regulated environment where civilians are included in the decision-making process. For years Southeast Asian companies and, of course, oil giants from the EU and US have been able to enjoy near unfettered exploitation of the country’s resources, which has caused huge societal crises – conflict, refugee flows, environmental damage, and so on.

With as yet no legislation that would negate these problems, the Arakan Oil Watch this week warned that Burma’s ‘resource curse’ could be exacerbated as companies line up to make a grab for the bounty. It highlights the problems of endemic corruption in the country and a constitution that guarantees the military far-reaching control over natural resources: this could worsen as interest in Burma’s gas deposits builds, with gas revenue amounting to over $2 billion in sales per year since 2006. That figure is “set to increase by 60% as new gas exports to China and Thailand begin as early as next year,” the group says. “An additional 41 oil and gas blocks are currently under exploration by various foreign companies”.

It makes the point that unless the army relinquishes control over lucrative sectors of the economy, abuses could worsen. “As oil and gas revenues are the single largest income source for the regime, it is widely believed that [Union of Myanmar Economic Holding Limited] has access to these revenues for the purchase of weapons.” Interested parties would do well to heed these concerns, given that investment in Burma continues to carry great material and reputational risks.

[Our sister site Travel Wire Asia has a report on how Burma is also struggling to cope with the current travel boom in the country.]

Pic: AP

The findings come as little surprise however, and not just because corruption is easy to get away with in Burma (which many observers see as the main catalyst). Rather involvement in criminal activities by government workers or army personnel is a necessary means for survival in a country where wages are woefully inadequate. That was acknowledged by the powerful speaker of Burma’s lower house, Shwe Mann, when he first mooted the idea of a pay hike in February: he felt raising salaries would stave the appetite of many civil servants and soldiers to indulge in activities that damage their “character” – namely siphoning off state money.

In the army, once Burma’s most vaunted institution, neglect of lower-ranking troops has led to graft so institutionalised that it has become the norm. Since the military introduced a self-sufficiency protocol that requires frontline troops to provide for themselves, the extent and methods of corruption have progressed to encompass everything from theft of civilian supplies (although not a sole result of poor wages) to complicity in the narcotics trade. With wages for privates thought to be little more than US$10 a month, the actions of a military already debased by decades of malpractice are predictable.

Shwe Mann thinks that boosting salaries will lead to a steady elimination of corrupt practices within state bodies, but any hope of a quick fix is misguided. So rooted in Burmese society is graft that it will take decades to weed out. Christina Fink’s excellent book on the psychological effects of military rule on Burma, Living Silence, warns that corruption is accepted right from the top generals and business tycoons down to everyday civilians.

“High-ranking generals and officials frequently take advantage of their positions for personal financial gain, but even among ordinary communities, few try to enforce social norms of making an honest living despite most people’s desire for a moral order,” she writes. (The Irrawaddy’s Kyaw Zwa Moe takes a similar line: “In Burma, there is no happy occasion that can’t double as an opportunity for slipping a gift to someone who matters”).

But the notion of a corrupt practice doesn’t necessarily mean it is bad, per se. She goes on to explain how poorly paid teachers are often forced to hold tuition courses after school that students are obliged to attend, and pay the teacher directly for. There is also something of a stigma attached to those who do not earn a buck on the side.

“Those who were honest and refused to engage in corrupt activities were often perceived as stupid and, in some cases, irresponsible, because they could not properly take care of their families,” Fink says.

Despite this, however, exposure of graft clearly remains a source of humiliation. The mining ministry, one of the six found to have stolen money, has threatened a lawsuit against the Voice Weekly journal whose article, ‘Audit finds billions of Kyat misappropriation by some ministries’, created a firestorm of accusations. But the silver lining of the story is that the journal was able to publish the piece in the first place, something unthinkable even six months ago. Exposure of illegal government activities will slowly aid the transparency effort, but for Burma (ranked third from bottom in Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index) to rout the practice from wider society will entail an overhaul of a national psyche that sees graft as a means for survival.

Burma democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi seen on the campaign trail ahead of next month's elections. Pic: AP.

In a January commentary on the limits of the reform programme in Burma, renowned journalist Bertil Lintner broached what is, to many, an unspeakable topic: “is Suu Kyi being used by the Thein Sein’s military-backed, civilianised government as a pawn in its efforts to break the country’s long isolation from the West?” he asked.

It was a brave move on Lintner’s part, for Burma observers have learnt to tread carefully around what could be interpreted as any doubt regarding The Lady’s political maneuvering. Whether by her making or not, Suu Kyi’s decisions have become sacrosanct, and even the slightest criticism is often met with sharp rebukes from supporters.

Hence there has been little real discussion in media about her campaign for a seat in Burma’s parliament in the April 1 by-elections. Much of the coverage has centered on the enormity of the moment – the estimated 100,000 who gathered to hear her speak in Mandalay last weekend, or the prospect of her joining official politics for the first time – and less on her future and that of Burma’s after the vote. Any scepticism is often distilled into one paragraph at the tail-end of an article: will she have any impact in a parliament dominated by military-backed MPs? Or will she be able to overturn a constitution that she herself said only 18 months ago was the key obstacle to her holding dialogue with a government that rode into office on the back of that document.

Judging by her decision to compete in the vote, it would appear much progress has been made since 2010, and to an extent this is true: Burmese can now peacefully protest for the first time in half a century, workers can legally strike and form unions, and exiled journalists can obtain visas to report inside the country. It is indeed a sea-change from the Burma that greeted Suu Kyi when she was released from house arrest in late 2010, and the country’s citizens are wholly justified in celebrating this.

But there are several problems with her campaign for a seat. First, and perhaps most problematic, is the constitution: the military, still the domineering force in Burma, effectively holds the power of veto in parliament – a clause in Chapter 12 reads that proposed amendments to many key areas of the constitution require 75 percent approval, and that given a quarter of seats are taken up by uniformed military men, with the majority of the remaining occupied by MPs from the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the chances of getting 75 percent of the parliament to vote against laws drawn up by the military are very slim. (NB: this portion of backing is also necessary to amend a clause that allows executive and judicial powers to be transferred to Burma’s army chief without parliamentary consent, should the president deem it necessary – see Chapter XI, 413b).

Suu Kyi will know that her place in parliament confers a degree of legitimacy on the constitution, but it’s a question of how far her influence can go towards overhauling it. As LSE academic Maung Zarni says, “Parliament is not about 60 million people behind Suu Kyi. It’s about who has the largest number of seats in Parliament”. No one expects her to take a substantial policy-making role anytime soon, but the feeling is that the April vote could be an early indicator of bigger things to come in the 2015 general elections, when the seeds of democracy the government claims to be sowing now will take root.

That is three years away, however, and within that timeframe lies a danger: will the forces within and outside of Burma that for decades have exerted pressure on the government begin to retreat too early? Burma has every potential to become another Cambodia, a country that maintains a rigid autocracy that stifles human freedoms, but does so behind the veneer of international ‘acceptability’ – this is largely allowed because the Hun Sen government is undoubtedly comparatively better than the Khmer Rouge, but taken in isolation, it remains a far cry from should be considered a functioning democracy.

Burma and Suu Kyi face a real risk of falling into this trap, given that her presence in parliament will be considered a sign that things are better than they were. That evaluation is short-sighted however, and endorsements from the west of this legitimisation process means that the bar could be set too low and cemented well into the future. This is particularly worrying given that the 2015 elections will be a time when pressure and scrutiny should be at its sharpest.

What is happening at the moment is clearly an opening for the political opposition – few would refute that – but the starry-eyed optimism needs to be tempered. The regime in Burma is not ceding power, but instead reframing as something more palatable for western diplomats and investors – repeated comparisons between Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela are therefore also misguided, and serve to heap credit on a government that will likely remain the driving force in Burma well into the future. Suu Kyi must exploit the openings ahead of her, but she and her supporters must be realistic about the risks of counterproductivity she takes in doing so.

Pic: AP.

The decision to suspend work on the massive China-backed Myitsone Dam in Burma is considered among President Thein Sein’s finer achievements since coming to office. It’s held aloft as a signal of his reformist credentials – a man who listens to the aggrieved public and responds in turn.

But the situation up in Kachin state, where the dam site is located, remains shrouded in mystery. Reports coming from the area say little has changed – camps housing Chinese technicians and Burmese labourers remain, whilst work is ongoing on the road planned to connect the dam to the Chinese border. Moreover, according to eye-witnesses I’ve spoken to, security – both Burmese police and army – has actually increased around the dam site in the past two months. Given the project is meant to have stopped, this makes little sense.

There also remains the issue of the 1,000 or so villagers relocated in 2010 to make way for construction (a portion of the 15,000 that was originally estimated to be displaced once an accompanying reservoir the size of Singapore formed): three out of five villages have been totally destroyed, but two – Mazup and Taunghpre – remain. Bizarrely, however, the inhabitants of those villages are still officially banned from returning (although some steadfastly refused to move in the first place, while others quietly go back), and thus pass their days in the Aungmyinthar relocation camp about three miles from the dam. Those who have attempted to return to Taunghpre have been greeted by Asia World employees who warned them quickly to leave (Asia World, run by Burmese business tycoon Steven Law, the son of former drugs kingpin Lo Hsing Han, is a partner in the project).

The India-based Mizzima news agency ran a piece yesterday saying that Taunghpre villagers were warned by the Myitsone district chief not to attempt to set up home again there, and even made to sign a pledge. “He [district chief] said although there is possibility that we can work in farming again in the [Taunghpre] village area, we must not live there,” Mizzima quotes a local as saying.

This all contributes to a feeling of uncertainty around the status of the project. The China Power Investment (CPI) Corporation, the lead company in the project, is certainly not giving up hope: last week it launched a PR campaign to reengineer public opinion about the dam, which has been hugely controversial and which became one of the key catalysts for Burma’s nascent environmental movement. CPI’s office in Myitkyina, the Kachin state capital, remains a hub of activity, and eye-witnesses report seeing trucks leaving it regularly in the direction of Myitsone.

There is, however, no smoking gun, and the beefed up security makes access to the area difficult. But reports coming from the area suggest that the proclaimed ‘suspension’ may not be so clear cut. Whatever is going on continues to stir animosity among locals: earlier this week a ceremony was held in Taunghpre, attended by the likes of student activist Min Ko Naing, in which villagers constructed a wall around the local church with stones collected from the dam site. They say the wall is emblematic of their continued resistance against the project, suggesting they are witnessing a level of activity that pours doubt on the authenticity of Thein Sein’s vaunted decision.

He became the first political prisoner of President Thein Sein’s pseudo-civilian government, which came to power in March last year, the month before his arrest. After undergoing torture and the pain of living for months in his cell with a broken vertebra, he was freed in the 13 January amnesty of prisoners.

But now he finds himself back in the dock facing a possible six months in prison on ludicrous charges – when he was allowed out of his cell in August last year to receive (inadequate) treatment for his injury, a friend handed him a t-shirt and key-ring bearing the image of Aung San Suu Kyi. Even under the ‘progressive’ government of Thein Sein, those were considered prohibited items. So only two weeks after walking free (or indeed staggering, given doctors were unable to fix his bone), he is staring down the barrel of another jail term. “Given that they are seriously building this case with accounts from prosecution witnesses, police and the [police intelligence], I guess they plan to make sure that I go down,” he told the Democratic Voice of Burma yesterday.

Several things strike me as worthy of raising: first, if sentenced, he will again become the first political prisoner of a “new” era, as he did when he was jailed last year. Awarding the same distinction twice to one person is quite a feat, and points to the palpable anger felt by the regime that one of their men, indeed a captain, had U-turned so spectacularly to join the opposition – that would be considered the most heinous form of dissent. Burma’s government has long framed the military as the country’s most prestigious institution, and until its degeneration into a mob of youths cavorting in the borderlands on salaries of just $US10 a month, it was a feted profession.

His former status probably explains why the government is going after him with such zeal – he is the public face of a widespread, but mostly silent, disillusionment among troops, particularly low-ranking fodder who desert in their dozens each year and are often forced to flee the country. Were he just a regular opposition member, then it’s unlikely they would arrest him a second time, especially now.

What his case also points to is the ongoing wielding of legal powers that are wholly inconsistent with the image the new government is trying to project. How can a country claiming to be transitioning to democracy (at an alarming speed, as many international observers proclaim) threaten a jail term for an individual on the grounds that they received a picture of somebody, particularly when that somebody may soon become a part of the government?

Suu Kyi herself took that challenge right to the government yesterday when she called for an overhaul of the country’s constitution, which was written by the former junta and rushed through in the weeks following Cyclone Nargis in 2008, when millions would have been unable to reach the voting booth. Overturning the raft of laws designed to penalise the opposition is a mammoth task – in the short term though, signs suggest the government is responding to public pressure, and the farcical nature of Nay Myo Zin’s case should be hammered home by the many diplomats currently engaging with the government.

The report details how Rohingya children are subject to racial profiling immediately after birth – those born outside of wedlock are placed on blacklists, and denied travel permits and access to education. While none of 750,000-strong population in western Burma’s Arakan state are registered as citizens, those children blacklisted suffer heftier treatment from authorities, and are unlikely to be able to marry when they grow up.

Burmese Rohingya refugees are pictured at an unregistered refugee camp in Bangladesh. Pic: AP.

A strict two-child policy for the Rohingya (and only the Rohingya) is also in place, and the same treatment detailed above applies to children born above that limit. The report says that families with unregistered children face constant threat of arrest, which is only avoided via “unending extortion” by government authorities.

“Despite signs of political reforms in the past five months, the [Burmese] government has reaffirmed specific deeply discriminatory policies against this minority group on national security grounds, using justifications of ‘illegal migration management’ and ‘control on population growth’,” said The Arakan Project, who submitted the report to the CRC. The organisation is one of the few that persistently attempts to spotlight the abuses against the Rohingya, and deserves huge commendation for its work.

As the recent furore over a BBC report that labels the Rohingya as Burmese shows, racism against the group is also widespread in Burmese society. Chat forums are filled with venomous attacks on the Muslim minority (some examples here), whom many Burmese claim are Bengali immigrants, with their dark skin often cited as proof that their origins lie outside of Burma. Advocacy groups counter this by arguing that in Arakan state Islam traces back to before the spread of the now dominant Theravada Buddhism.

Debating their origins however is somewhat extraneous to the inquiry we should be having – few ask why this deep-seated fear of the Rohingya exists among Burmese, and moreover how society there will reconcile the fact that current reforms are means to open up the country to the outside world, an inevitable by-product of which will be a greater foreign presence. Burma’s borders have historically been porous enough to allow huge migration of peoples into and out of the country, and while this has not always sat easily with Burmese (note the anti-Chinese riots in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and indeed current animosity at the huge presence of Chinese in places like Mandalay, many of whom, unlike the Rohingya, are granted legal status), its xenophobia needs to be addressed now more than ever as it attempts to join a globalised world.

In a country where persecution against ethnic minorities makes regular headlines, the plight of the Rohingya is woefully underreported. Moreover, very justifiable claims from Burmese across the spectrum of egregious abuses committed against them by the government do not stretch to the Rohingya, who are seen as foreign infiltrators and therefore not deserving of the world’s sympathy and assistance. That hypocrisy is publicly reinforced by the government – the head of The Arakan Project, Chris Lewa, told me that she came face to face with Burma’s representative at the UN upon submitting the report to the CRC:

“As the experts insisted on a reply, the Burmese [representative] Maung Wai took the floor and just claimed that he recognized that there was a problem in Northern [Arakan] state, which was illegal immigration. Not surprisingly, he said that there was no Rohingya in Myanmar and that Rohingya is not one of the 135 national races … Then a Committee member asked how he called them. He replied Bengali.”

Note also that current sitting ambassador to the UN, Ye Myint Aung, wrote in a letter to fellow diplomats during his prior tenure as Consul-General to Hong Kong that Rohingya were “ugly as ogres”.

Up to 400,000 are believed to be living in neighbouring Bangladesh, only 28,000 of whom can receive official assistance from the UN (Dhaka worries that additional assistance would act as a pull-factor for those Rohingya still in Burma). Each year hundreds make the perilous ocean voyage from Bangladesh to Thailand or Malaysia in search of work and safer refuge, often meeting grisly ends – in January 2009 Thai coastguards pushed a boat packed with around 190 refugees that had washed up on its southern coast back out to sea and left them to die.

Last year a boatload of Rohingya that only made it as far as southern Burma were brought ashore, and the 63 on board jailed on immigration charges.

The CRC is due to issue concluding observations on The Arakan Project’s report on February 3. How that will affect the fate of Rohingya, described by Medicins Sans Frontierés as one of the world minority groups “most in danger of extinction”, remains to be seen, but between the praise and condemnation of Burma’s government by the international community, their names are not uttered. Wisened Burma observers know that the country’s ills cannot be solved overnight, no matter how many ceasefires or reforms are enacted, and weeding out such entrenched and vitriolic discrimination from Burmese society will be a very long, very painful process.

The move has prompted two immediate questions: first, what has become of the 60-year lease awarded to Ital-Thai to develop the Dawei industrial zone (surely it has been spectacularly breached)? Second, with the cancellation of the 4,000 MW plant, whose output would have contributed towards powering construction of the vast array of factories and petrochemical plants the 200 square-kilometre site will house, how can the project possibly continue?

Like the Myitsone decision, the government has cited public opposition as the key trigger for the Dawei cancellation; also like Myitsone, its newfound fans have been quick to link the scrapping of the plant to the reformist nature of Thein Sein and his cabinet. But while it may have been China’s increasing economic influence in Burma, rather than disquiet among Burmese, that prompted the country’s nationalistic rulers to (temporarily) jump ship on Myitsone, the Dawei decision is slightly more puzzling – the government doesn’t stand to benefit, economically or ideologically, unless it has really developed a conscience and translated that into policy.

What is being left out of the initial reactions however is the fact that a coal-fired plant will in all probability still be built, only that its size will dramatically reduce. The industrial site, which upon completion is set to be Southeast Asia’s largest, and which will forever reshape Burma’s Andaman Sea coastline, can survive on a plant that produces only 400 MW – the surplus 3,600 MW was due to be sold off to Thailand, which has provided the bulk of the US$8 billion start-up costs for the project (which is expected to eventually reach US$50 billion).

Pressure had been building on the Burmese government from a range of players angry at the health impacts synonymous with a project of this size – locals around Dawei, a sleepy fishing town, have vehemently rejected the venture, which it is estimated could displace up to 30,000 people (Ital-Thai put the figure at 10,000 last year). Moreover, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) has actively resisted the construction of a road that will link Dawei to Bangkok (which will in turn feed other regional economies), and demanded recently that Ital-Thai carry out an environmental impact assessment before going any further with it.

The Karen army denies that the Dawei decision is linked to attempts to broker a ceasefire deal with the government: its spokesperson, David Htaw, told me today that while it had pushed for a survey of the road, the coal plant was not mentioned in discussions with government officials.

So where does that leave us? In something of a quagmire of contradictions and bemusement, to be frank: any paean to public opinion in Burma by the government must be contrasted with its army’s ongoing, vicious attacks against civilians in the border regions, and the decision to allow only 32 political prisoners free earlier this month (despite the mother of all diplomats, Hillary Clinton, calling for giant steps in that department).

It may be that the combination of public animosity and the potential for military attacks on the Dawei project from the KNLA proved too portentous, as indeed was the case with Myitsone which lay unnervingly close to Kachin rebel territory; even that the discrepancy between the amount of power needed for construction of the industrial complex, and the final figure of 4,000 MW, was always going to be something of a numerical buffer zone for the government, within which it could manoeuvre dazzlingly but not lose out on the prized asset that is the industrial zone – perhaps the key indicator of its rising strategic status in the region.

This of course doesn’t factor in the likely fallout that’ll come as Ital-Thai, and indeed energy-hungry Thailand, formulate some sort of response to the cancellation, which will have also stretched Burma’s own Special Economic Zone (SEZ) laws to the fullest – for that we’ll just have to wait, but as the Burmese government showed after Myitsone, if it can quickly mend bridges with the aggressive powerhouse to the north, not to mention its adeptness at convincing the West that it is heading in the right direction, then its powers of appeasement are perhaps greater than it is given credit for.

Pic: AP.

What also slips under the radar is the expanding role of foreign business in this debased and brutal conflict. Chinese companies are often targeted by the exiled and western human rights movement as pernicious and apathetic –  a sign of both historic animosity among Burmese towards their northern neighbours, but also China’s sizeable presence in the country, especially in the hydropower sector whose impact is largely seen in the volatile border regions where the topography makes waterways ideal for damming. But Western companies are also complicit – Chevron, Total, Malcolm Dunstan & Associates, the list continues – and must share some of the blame.

The intensity of these conflicts has fluctuated since they first erupted 60 years ago, but changed course in the 1990s when Burma and its neighbours began to realise the veritable goldmine that the country’s frontier regions held. Deals were cut with groups like the Kachin, who relinquished control over jade mines in the north in exchange for cross-border trade concessions and a ceasefire, and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, who also agreed to lay down arms in exchange for a portion of the logging industry and border trade.

LSE academic Maung Zarni wrote in the Democratic Voice of Burma yesterday that with the help of its neighbours, successive Burmese rulers since independence have “been on a mission to revive the local imperial vision of Burma”, and are now aided by “an international consortium of business-hungry vultures, from Wall Street to the Asian Development Bank who, knowingly or not, are fuelling the pacification of minority communities”.

From struggles for independence, these conflicts have developed into a business-driven crusade: “The aspiring capitalist state in Burma, under a new generation of generals, now wants and needs nothing less than complete and effective control over commercial and strategic lands,” he continues.

With the US making little secret of its ambitions for the Asia-Pacific region over the coming decade, Washington has shown signs that it will renege on years of criticism of the Burmese government as it seeks to build an alliance of regional nations that it can draw away from China. Georgetown University held a conference last month that brought together some interesting characters that may help to shape the future of Burma under its new business-oriented government: these included Professor Li Chenyang, one of a team of Chinese academics who made the first public proposal for the trans-Burma Shwe pipeline that will pump oil and gas to China. Perhaps tellingly, the conference was part-sponsored by Chevron and Caterpillar – executives from the US-based construction giant were in Naypyidaw in August to meet with government officials, likely with a view to gaining a foothold in a country that is becoming increasingly crucial to foreign markets, including the US.

Burma’s business and military elite are thus attracting something of a fan base among international governments, analysts and lobbyists. In their musings on Burma, foreign dignitaries and commentators appear to be hampered by something of a blind spot that sees them home in on the nominal, albeit promising, political reforms underway between Rangoon and Naypyidaw, whilst failing to highlight the wars raging in the border regions, and the international complicity increasingly at play there. This myopia was exemplified by South Asianist Marie Lall in a lengthy BBC op-ed that dedicated only one line to the ongoing civil war, and reserved the rest for the “political” face of progress. Other guilty players include the International Crisis Group.

Perhaps these people see the fighting as separate to the political process; that the border regions have little bearing on the future of Burma. The links however are absolutely intrinsic – Naypyidaw needs these areas under its control before it can brand itself as a market-oriented government and one that is “acceptable” to the proclaimed values of western business. To do that, resistant populations must be pacified, and since multiple ceasefires have fallen to pieces, the Burmese military must therefore take up the challenge of reining them in. Companies and world leaders that disregard this dynamic are ignoring the very bloody means to a cynical end.

The same fanfare preempted an amnesty in May this year, the first major gesture of appeasement by President Thein Sein after he came to office. That was short-lived, however, when it emerged that only around 55 of the nearly 15,000 inmates released were the jailed activists, MPs, journalists, lawyers and doctors that have long been the focus of rallying cries from Washington to Rangoon. That pattern is consistent across the years – from October 2004 to 2011, only 607 political prisoners have been freed, of a total 60,078 granted amnesty.

Family members of Burma prisoners wait outside Insein Prison in Yangon Wednesday. Pic: AP.

That could all change tomorrow, and the feeling among Burmese exile and pressure groups is one of optimism, largely due to the events of the last two months. As the Financial Times reported today, Norway’s deputy foreign minister “almost left the country [following a visit last week] thinking they’re moving a little too fast”. He added of the many pledges of reform: “The danger is not that it’s not sincere, but that the counter forces will set in.”

Even the most hardened critics are grudgingly acknowledging that President Thein Sein is pushing an openness that Burma hasn’t witnessed since the days before the Ne Win coup of 1962. The recent actions of the former prime minister, who was chief architect of many of the military junta’s most maligned policies, still puzzle observers, who see a moderate in power but whom rightly remain sceptical of his intentions.

With the avalanche of developments inside the country, the past fortnight has been a busy scramble to take stock of, and closely scrutinise, what really is happening: mouths dropped at the announcement that the Myitsone Dam in northern Burma, one of China’s largest overseas projects, would be scrapped, before the country’s censor chief began digging his own grave with the suggestion that media restrictions should be done away with (as The Economist chirped, “Bureaucrats rarely suggest their own voluntary-redundancy programmes, but that is exactly what Myanmar’s chief censor did on October 8^th”).

Finger-wagging at the masterful spin doctors in Naypyidaw remains, but with less vigour: instead that is being replaced by raised eyebrows and cautious hope that after decades of double-speak and agony, something is actually happening. The Myitsone decision has, to no one’s surprise, been applauded by the West, with the US in particular looking to boot China out of Burma and assert its own brand of values on the country (Washington’s Asia-Pacific man, Kurt Campbell, said casually that the US will look to “shift resources and capability from the Middle East and South Asia to the Asia-Pacific region” as the decade progresses).

Tomorrow then could be the first real step Burma takes to acceding to demands made by the pro-democracy movements and the US, which will drop sanctions in return for measures such as a comprehensive amnesty for political prisoners. Burma perhaps now feels that embracing the US and EU is a more sustainable alternative to the hefty demands on its environment and social fabric that a close relationship with China carries, although one should certainly not jump the gun on this, nor ignore the self-seeking intentions of the US. We’re at a very early stage, but tomorrow could at least give an idea of things to come.

Emerging as the key player in what can rightly be termed the civil society “movement” is Nay Win Maung, a successful publisher, businessman and journalist, and founder of NGO Myanmar Egress. He appears to be able to successfully juggle cordial relations with foreign diplomats (a recently leaked US cable describes him as “a close contact of the British Embassy and European diplomats”) and the Burmese government – something few people in the past have managed. In the coming years he is expected to become a pivotal force in the country.

But he remains a controversial figure – he is the darling of a number of countries bent on taking a soft approach to reform in Burma, but an obstacle to those who see civil society, and his role in it, as a public relations charade by the new government. Shawn Crispin, writing in the Asia Times, says that while his proponents “see him as a hopeful ‘Third Force’ to break the decades-old political impasse between Myanmar’s military generals and the Aung San Suu Kyi-led political opposition,” others are less convinced.

“To his critics, he is an apologist for military-led incremental change and front man for plans presented as economic reform to privatize and redistribute the country’s riches among a narrow military-linked elite – of which, they say, Nay Win Maung is part and parcel. Others see his Egress as a military-built “Trojan Horse” among unsuspecting European donors who believe they are supporting organic democratic change from within, but in the process are being hoodwinked into abandoning their commitments to pro-democracy groups in exile.”

Nay Win Maung’s philosophy, albeit somewhat ambiguous, however acts as a key reference point for the ongoing debate about where a post-election Burma is heading – more of the same with a government that is little more than a plain-clothed reincarnation of the previous junta, or a new era of comparative liberty after decades of military rule? His murmurings suggest a quiet support for the Thein Sein administration (he is believed to have written many of the new president’s speeches), and rejection of the traditional political opposition, despite him championing reform in Burma (the same US cable quoted him as saying that Aung San Suu Kyi should “drop ‘confrontational’ politics”).

His reputation is not helped by the opacity of his organisation, Myanmar Egress, about which little is known. While this could be excusable if indeed they were pushing the boundaries of what can and cannot be done to develop a politically engaged civilian population, one wonders whether its ambiguity instead reflects a need to keep its shady workings and proximity to the government hidden from the pro-reform lobby.

Frustratingly for the Burmese exile community that has spent decades gnawing away at the pressure points of the regime, both Nay Win Maung and his supporters in the EU appear to now regard them as superfluous. This is epitomised by a revamped EU policy that has siphoned funding from exiled media and lobby groups to the likes of Myanmar Egress, despite widespread acceptance that any freedom of political movement inside Burma requires a certain degree of adherence to tight (even counterproductive) government restrictions – something that is perhaps evidenced by Nay Win Maung’s known relations with Thein Sein et al.

The latest gesture came yesterday via state television, with cabinet secretary Tin Myo Kyi saying that armed groups “willing to work for peace after resolving armed conflicts, are invited to contact respective state/division governments”. Naypyidaw would then “form a delegation to have peace talks”. This follows on the heels of several failed attempts to broker truces, notably with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in the north.

Reports suggest that the KIA has shrugged off the proposal, and perhaps not surprisingly. Any ceasefire on Naypyidaw’s terms would involve the armed opposition, which is fighting for autonomy in a federal union, capitulating to the government’s side – it’s simply antithetic to the aspirations of the government to see portions of the country annexed to local, ethnic authorities, over whom it will have little sway. A truce would therefore necessarily involve ethnic groups breaking with their goals and inviting further encroachment of the military, which none are willing to do.

The picture in the border regions is slightly different now to when the majority of ceasefires were signed in the mid 1990s, particularly given Naypyidaw’s growing hunger for the natural resources that lie uncomfortably close to armed ethnic territory. While until recently the ceasefire groups could operate relatively freely within their allotted space, running micro economies and school and healthcare systems, the government knows that it now must secure the border regions if it is to secure its own future. As well, the lingering ultranationalism of the military still dictates much of government policy, meaning that strategic  interests combine with a staunch and toxic idealism to render the ethnic states perennial war zones.

The links between the current conflicts and the Thein Sein administration’s longevity are thus intrinsic; moreover, while neither side wants to fight, their interpretations of “peace” are wildly at odds: peace in Naypyidaw means pacification and control, while among Burma’s ethnic populations it would effectively entail being out of the reach of the government (James C. Scott’s ‘The Art of Not Being Governed’ is a vast and masterful analysis of historical attempts by ethnic groups across Burma and Southeast Asia to shirk government control).

Like most senile authoritarian rulers, those in Burma have no real interest in bridging the huge gulf between fanciful rhetoric and action. For all the talk of progress and reform uttered by the government, echoed by foreign policymakers and seasoned academics who really should know better, and then massaged by inconsequential gestures, little of substance is likely to change in Burma. History tells us that dictatorships do not deliberately orchestrate their own downfall – they are hardwired against doing so – but instead realise that time does not work in their favour, and if they are to retain power they need a veneer of legitimacy.

That is exactly what is happening in Burma with the doublespeak of ‘peace’ and ‘dialogue’ – it’s a lick of paint that the armed opposition along the borders, and Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, is only too aware of, but others seemingly not so. Change will come if the regime miscalculates how far they can stretch this facade, and any weaknesses are then quickly exploited. Nothing however suggests that Naypyidaw is planning its own demise.

At the time of the statement, Burma was a slightly different kettle of fish, insomuch as armed conflict was more or less confined to Karen state and southern Shan state. Today vast swathes of the northern and eastern frontier region are experiencing upheaval as more ethnic armies fend off aggression from the central government. The ties between the latest wave of conflict and Burma’s booming, largely foreign-financed, energy projects (particularly in Kachin and Shan states) have been extensively analysed, but given its distance from the main areas of conflict, most people have tiptoed around the issue of the massive Tavoy deep-sea port development in the far south.

As the Thailand-based Karen News reports, however, the proverbial wolves are closing in: 50 workers from the Thai engineering giant behind the project, Ital-Thai, were forced to flee to Thailand last week after fighting broke out close to a road being built to link Tavoy with the Thai town of Kanchanaburi – a prime example of the “material risks” ERI warns about. Karen News also said the construction camp was hit by artillery.

The Karen National Union, which the Burmese government has been battling for six decades and whose attack on a Burmese army camp triggered the Ital-Thai exodus, later warned that “[a]ny company that does not get KNU official permission and confiscates land belonging to villagers will be regarded as military dictatorship-backed companies”. Chinese workers at hydropower sites in Kachin state have also experienced similar animosity from armed groups.

One of the chief accusations levelled at foreign companies working in Burma is that their money helps to keep rulers and business cronies in positions of power, thereby maintaining the status quo. ERI deftly turned the focus onto the pockets and (red) faces of these companies, whom despite seeing major profits from working in such a poorly regulated environment have faced boycotts, problems with in-country mobility of staff and vitriolic animosity from civilian populations. Seldom, however, has one been mooted as a military target – meaning that Ital-Thai, which candidly admitted that 10,000 people will be displaced in and around Tavoy, potentially faces greater hurdles.

What these energy-related conflicts also nurture is greater scrutiny by the general public over investment in Burma, aided by growing networks of civil society monitoring groups inside the country and campaigners and journalists outside. As ERI notes, this heightens reputational risks for multinationals (Ital-Thai has already been driven out of the Map Tha Put project in Thailand), as was the case for oil giants Total and Chevron, who generated $US969 million in revenue for the junta in 2007, the same year that Burmese troops shot and killed around 100 protesting monks and civilians.

The fear of the supernatural trickles right down to the everyday folk: the three Thai army helicopters that crashed in the space of 10 days in the same area of jungle along the Thai-Burma border were brought down by angry forest spirits, some Karen villagers speculated. Despite the arrival of Christianity in the 19^th century, Burma’s eastern frontier region remains predominately Buddhist – that goes for the vast majority of Burma, which over centuries has incorporated elements of animism, the previous dominant religion, into everyday life. Most prominent of these are the Nat spirits, who around the 12^th century became the guardians of the state, and supposedly guaranteed dynastic continuity.

Than Shwe was known to dabble in numerology. Pic: AP.

That elevation of otherworldly beings to the top of the chain of command provides some explanation of the current state of affairs: Burma’s era of military rule was scarred by brash and wholly irrational decisions, made by leaders who were paranoically in thrall to the supernatural. The country’s first military ruler, Ne Win (an adopted name that means “brilliant as the sun”), who closed Burma’s doors to the outside world and single-handedly orchestrated the collapse of its economy, was rumoured to bathe in dolphin’s blood, believing it staved off the perils of old age. When an astrologer told him that his lucky number was 9, he banned all bank notes that were not divisible by 9. Overnight, the millions of Burmese who, distrustful of the country’s banking system tend to horde cash in their homes, were propelled further into poverty.

Then up stepped Than Shwe, whose auspicious number was 11. While perhaps not as brazen as Ne Win, his various dalliances with numerology are evident: many of his most feared opponents – including student leader Min Ko Naing and 13 other key figures in the September 2007 uprising – were handed 65 year sentences (6+5 = 11), all convicted in November 2008 (the 11^th month of the year), and the guilty verdicts announced at 11am.

But Than Shwe’s most spectacular paean to the spirits arrived in 2005, when after reportedly consulting his fortune teller, E Thi (better known as ET, on account of her appearance), a deaf mute from Rangoon, he relocated the capital from Rangoon to Naypyidaw, where it now sits on a dusty, empty patch of scrubland. Her services were also sought by former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who was reportedly warned to stay out of Thailand between 8 and 22 September 2006 – he heeded the warning, but whilst in New York on 21 September was deposed in a military coup.

While not strictly a dynasty in Naypyidaw, the Nat spirits appear to have done their job. Current President Thein Sein was close to Than Shwe – the former’s name translates loosely as “hundreds of thousands of diamonds”, while Than Shwe means “millions of gold” – and may well have rode into office with the help of higher powers: according to the International Crisis Group, known more for crunchy geopolitical analysis than examinations of superstition, the date of last year’s elections, 7 November (7+1+1 = 9), should be scrutinised for celestial involvement, as should the time and date of the first legislature, at 08.55 (8+5+5 = 18 ~ 1+8 = 9) on 31/1/2011 (3+1+1+2+1+1 = 9).

Far-fetched, perhaps, but history might tell you otherwise…

Elsewhere the country is pockmarked with zones of displacement, concentrated largely along the eastern frontier; over the border in Thailand, the map depicts tiny purple huts representing the refugee camps that house nearly 150,000 victims of these wars, some of which ironically are carried out to secure Thailand’s energy needs. The glaring hypocrisy is that many of the countries who have complained over the years about their role in shouldering Burma’s refugee burden are those whose hunger for her natural resources are fuelling conflict.

Karen villagers leave their homes in Burma. Pic: AP.

If the National Geographic had waited a bit longer, it would’ve had more batches of data to add: Ital-Thai, the company behind the Tavoy deep sea megaproject in Burma’s far south, candidly admitted last month that 10,000 people would be displaced by the huge port and industrial complex (ironically the same company that was forced out of the Map Ta Phut project in Thailand following sustained pressure from locals).

There are also 20,000-plus people who have fled their homes since fighting began on 9 June in Kachin state, much of which has centred around major dam projects. Although they’re not explicitly acknowledged on the map, the National Geographic has depicted the aggressive damming of rivers in that region, and the 15,000 people expected to be displaced by flooding from the massive, and hugely controversial, Myitsone Dam (while millions more the length of Burma will be impacted by fluctuations in the Irrawaddy river’s water levels and the dam’s sizeable effects on biodiversity).

There was also the fighting in March around Hsipaw in Shan state, one of the final stops before the Shwe oil and gas pipelines enter China. Two months later, trucks laden with pipeline parts were seen leaving the Chinese border town of Jaegao, en route to Hsipaw.

The idea that valuable areas that encroach on territory controlled by armed opposition groups (or indeed resistant civilian populations) need to be “cleared” of obstacles is a hallmark of government policy the world over, but for the ease of critics, little subtlety surrounds such campaigns in Burma: as I blogged earlier, the fighting in Kachin state erupted shortly after Burmese officials held talks with Chinese counterparts. Few details of those discussions have been released, but China is behind the majority of hydropower projects in northern Burma and has regularly told Naypyidaw to keep the border region “stable” (an ambiguous word when uttered by Chinese officials).

Many of the highly lucrative jade mines in Kachin state had once been controlled by the warring Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which as part of a ceasefire deal with the Burmese regime 17 years ago passed over “ownership”. Now the tussle over Kachin state’s natural resources is back on, with the KIA having fought costly recent battles with the Burmese army close to the dam sites of Shweli and Taping.

A UN report last month labelled Burma the world’s fifth-highest source country for refugees, above that of both war-torn Sudan and Colombia where battles for resource control have also eaten away at populations there. That report however didn’t mention the fuel for war in Burma that is provided by competition for energy, and equally importantly that Western countries are also key contributors (don’t forget that companies from the US, France and the UK are deeply implicated in this), so hats off to the National Geographic.

Until yesterday, Kyaw Win had been a solid career diplomat with more than three decades experience in the Burmese foreign ministry. That a man so familiar with the machinations of the regime takes so long to acknowledge that “democratic change under this system will not happen in the foreseeable future,” as the letter laments, is somewhat mystifying. But the timing of the decision, during a period when Naypyidaw is winning plaudits from key international players for seemingly little, appears on the surface a bold statement of protest.

“When I first began my service in the Foreign Ministry I thought that, over time and perhaps with the help of my efforts, the military would ease its grip and send Myanmar [Burma] on a path to greater political pluralism,” he wrote in the letter. “However, the truth is that senior military officials are consolidating their grip on power and seeking to stamp out the voices of those seeking democracy, human rights and individual liberties. Oppression is rising and war against our ethnic cousins is imminent and at present, threats are being made against Aung San Suu Kyi — they must be taken seriously.”

He follows in the footsteps of Aung Linn Htut, a former senior intelligence officer and top diplomat who quit his post in 2005 and claimed asylum in the US. Aung Linn Htut now works as a part-time analyst and is outspoken about the regime and his intelligence work – whether Kyaw Win will join the dozens of government and military defectors whose protests cast them as pro-democracy heroes remains to be seen. Dr Maung Zarni, an academic at LSE and founder of the US-based Free Burma Coalition, told me that Kyaw Win was “long disillusioned” with the regime, “as most career diplomats are”.

“He is a decent guy who has spoken his mind to other Burmese whom he came into contact with,” Dr Maung Zarni said. Kyaw Win reportedly thought the election last year a small positive step, and generally shunned international confrontation, but after the vote “realised he was fed monkey meat”. Zarni met the former diplomat several years ago and “was surprised how candid he was with me about his views of the regime, and I suspected then it was a matter of time before he defected”.

His decision to publicly defect now will perhaps have more impact than prior to new government coming to power, signalling as it does high-profile dissent within the ranks despite consistent promises of progress from the Burmese prime minister. Some, however, smell a rat: Derek Tonkin, the former British ambassador to Thailand, and who now runs Network Myanmar, commented that the speedy release of the letter, which was carried on RFA and VOA on the same day, is suspicious.

“[It] strongly suggests to me manipulation by hawks in the US determined to sabotage any hope of detente in US-Burmese relations,” he posted on DVB. “It is highly unlikely that the letter was written solely on Kyaw Win’s personal initiative without help and support from US official sources. His asylum application could have been handled quite differently.

“I bet that Derek Mitchell [mooted US envoy to Burma] and Kurt Campbell [a US diplomat with long-time interest in Burmese affairs] are furious at the way in which their mandates and missions have been undermined through what has been deliberately handled as a propaganda coup. Kyaw Win was clearly of no intelligence value as he would otherwise have been whisked away and not heard of for weeks if not months. I wonder if Mitchell and Campbell were even consulted,” Tonkin said.

Refugees sit in a detention center on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pic: AP.

Forgetting the hypocrisy of Canberra’s attempts to deny those in need asylum (Gillard arrived in Australia aged four after doctors in the UK prescribed a warmer climate as a cure for a bronchial condition), there is real concern about the conditions that the 800 refugees earmarked for the ‘Malaysia Solution’ will be forced into. Nearly 170,000 refugees and asylum-seekers “come to Malaysia seeking safety, having fled situations of torture, persecution or death threats,” said an Amnesty report last year. “But once they arrive, they are abused, exploited, arrested and locked-up – in effect treated like criminals.”

The 800 leaving Australia for Malaysia are mostly ‘boatpeople’ who have washed up on Australia’s shores only to be detained in over-crowded, high security centres on Christmas Island or onshore camps, where some have been known to stay for as long as five years. They are the victims of Howard’s strengthening in 2001 of the government’s mandatory detention policy, which allows for indefinite detention of unauthorised persons, including children (something that the ruling Labour government, which used as an election stick criticism of the ‘children behind razor wire’ practice of Howard, spoke out against in the run-up to the 2007 vote).

By inking the deal with Malaysia, Gillard has violated Australia’s obligations to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Article 33 states that “no contracting State shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his (or her) life or freedom would be threatened”. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has already said the move is illegal, and Australia’s parliament has rejected it, but that matters little – it is effectively a done deal, Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition told DVB earlier this month.

Every now and then, a detainee in one of these Australian centres erupts in a fit of frustration, and for a brief period draws attention to conditions in the camps – earlier this year a man from the Rohingya minority in Burma attempted to set himself on fire in a Darwin camp; last week another Burmese man went on hunger strike. Other nationalities populating the camps have fled war and persecution in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere; now bound for Malaysia, they will be sent to the back of the immigration queue and forced to go through the interminable trials of registration. During that uncertain period, “they face the daily prospect of being arrested, detained in squalid conditions, and tortured and otherwise ill-treated, including by caning”, says the Amnesty report, followed by a precarious life within the bounds of strict immigrant laws.

Gillard et al are using the initiative as a warning “not to get on that boat” – continual acceptance of refugees would also “send the wrong message” to the people smugglers who facilitate these perilous journeys across seas, they say. Some observers claim it is a populist appeal aimed at harnessing support from Australia’s growing anti-immigration lobby. Regardless, Gillard chooses to ignore the end-results of these policies – a striking show of callousness and hypocrisy given her background.

Family members of the victims have also been slain: in Dum Bung village [Bhamo district], Burmese troops “caught three families who had not managed to flee in time. Six women and girls were gang-raped, and seven small children killed,” said a KWAT statement. In nearby Je Sawn village, soldiers “killed a 7-year-old girl and then gang-raped and killed her grandmother”.

The allegations cannot be independently verified and the Burmese government does not allow non-state aid groups to work close to rebel territory. But historical documentation of rape by Burmese troops during military offensives in ethnic regions is extensive, something that analysts often brand a “weapon of war” for its ability to spread fear among, and subjugate, a population. Aung San Suu Kyi told a summit of Nobel Prize winners in May that the problem is “very real” and “is used as a weapon by armed forces to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and to divide our country”.

The tactic is of course not exclusive to Burma but rears its head in many war zones, mostly commonly when rival ethnic groups are battling for dominance. The Burmese army has long been accused of a campaign to ‘Burmanise’ the ethnic regions and ‘dilute’ minority groups through rape, religious persecution, displacement and massacres.

Several reports detailing the phenomenon in Burma have been released over the years. System of Impunity told the case of a 13-year-old Shan girl, Nang Ung, who was detained by Burmese troops on false charges of being a rebel. “She was tied up in a tent and raped every day for 10 days [by five to six troops each day]. The injuries she sustained from the repeated rapes were so severe that she never recovered. She died a few weeks after her release.”

The Harvard Law School’s Crimes in Burma report, released in May 2009 and seen as one of the main catalysts for the push for a UN war crimes’ probe into Burma, said that on many occasions there has been “no attempt to conceal the bodies of dead women who were raped and subjected to other acts of violence” – a public lesson to others, perhaps.

What’s important to note is that these aren’t isolated incidents, but appear to be an institutionalized practice. The Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN) found that of the rapes documented in its landmark 2002 report, License to Rape, 83 percent were committed by officers, while 61 percent were gang rapes. There is a sickening consistency in the way these assaults are carried out that suggests it isn’t solely the work of bestial, debased frontline troops – a concern reinforced in the Shattering Silences report by the Karen Women’s Organisation, which claims there have been cases of officers ordering their men to rape ethnic women on threat of death.