/CORRECTED REPEAT/POLITICS: Amid Row with Thailand, Burma Drags Feet on Ethnic Issue

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jun 19 2002 (IPS) - The tension along the Thai-Burmese border, now in its fifth week, has given Rangoon the opportunity to drag its feet on pursuing national reconciliation efforts, leaders of Burma’s ethnic groups say.

They explain that Rangoon’s reaction to this otherwise regular flare-up along the porous border — mounting a war of words, replete with insults against Thailand — is the clearest giveaway that it is least interested in breathing life into these efforts.

The junta has been known to indulge in such excesses when it wants to avoid dealing with an issue, buy more time or distract the international community’s particular concerns over Burma.

It also means that there is little sign that the May 6 release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi would soon lead to national reconciliation talks, or addressing the sensitive issue of the place that ethnic groups, which have been fighting Rangoon for decades, have in this dialogue.

They are “blowing out of proportion the border problems with Thailand,” says Chao Tzang Yawnghwe, director at the National Reconciliation Programme for Burma, an organisation based at Chiang Mai University, in northern Thailand.

“They will play for time,” adds Yawnghwe, a leader of the Shan ethnic community. “They will try to distract everyone’s attention – the focus of the international community especially – from the dialogue and peace process as they are now doing.”

“The current border incidents hurt the national reconciliation process,” says a member of the Karen Human Rights Group who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It is a distraction, turning attention away from the question of equal treatment for all ethnic communities in Burma.”

Since Thailand launched a military exercise involving 10,000 troops along its northern border in late May, Burma’s military government has raged against Bangkok, accusing it of supporting two ethnic rebel groups – Shan and Karen guerrillas – active in that rugged region.

This week, Burmese troops teamed up with forces from the Wa, an ethnic group with close links to Rangoon, to launch another assault on Shan guerrilla bases along the border.

The Thai government denies Rangoon’s charges and is trying desperately to restore friendly ties with its neighbour.

But the generals at the helm of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the government is known, appear to be in no mood to march to a different beat.

With its attention focused on the tensions with Thailand, activists worry that the process of reconciliation they hoped would pick up after Suu Kyi’s release has been sidelined.

The freedom of the Nobel Peace Prize winner was a much needed boost for these talks, says Soe Aung, a director at the Network for Democracy and Development (NDD), a group made up of Burmese living here in exile. “She has met with representatives of the ethnic nationality parties after her release. She supports the idea of equality among the ethnic groups.”

“In many ways, one can look upon Daw Suu as holding all the good cards, the aces and all that, while the generals are weak,” Yawnghwe explains. “That is why they don’t want to engage in real dialogue.”

Thus far, he adds, there is “no real sign – the generals have as yet to officially inform the people inside that they are committed to dialogue and change even though their ambassadors have been saying this abroad”.

Much international attention has been directed at the U.N.- brokered reconciliation efforts between the SPDC and Suu Kyi, aimed at restoring democracy in Burma after 40 years of military dictatorship.

But while this will not be easy, the issue of resolving ethnic groups’ concerns is an even more protracted one.

This stems from the ethnic diversity of this South-east Asian nation, home to more than 130 communities. While the Burmans are the largest ethnic group, seven others – the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon, Rakhine and Shan — have sizable numbers in the regions they hail from, mostly along the country’s border.

The idea of equality among all ethnic groups is supposedly a pillar of this country – a feature recognised in the 1947 Panglong Accord, the document that defined independent Burma – but the Burman-dominated military regimes have failed to uphold it in practise.

Discrimination endured by the Mon, for instance, bears this out. Rangoon has ordered the Mon Literacy and Culture Committee to “stop teaching Mon literature and forced them to sign a document promising that they would not continue operating the literacy training,” states the Human Rights Documentation Unit (HRDU), a body run by Burmese in exile.

Non-Burmans are often forced by the junta to work in “development” projects, this Thai-based rights watchdog adds. “Many ethnic minorities have been forced to work as unpaid labourers. No one is spared, neither the sick nor the elderly, neither women nor children.”

The SPDC has denied members of ethnic groups the freedom to travel, banned them from using their own language among themselves and regularly detains people on “the basis of their ethnic minority status”, the HRDU adds.

Rangoon has also used the military to “exert its mainly Burman influence over the minorities living in areas of insurgency,” states the HRDU.

Besides the Karen and the Shan rebels, there are pockets of resistance to Rangoon’s oppression from armed Karenni, the Chin and the Arkan.

“The ethnic groups are very frustrated by the discrimination,” says NDD’s Aung, himself a Burman. “And the SPDC keeps delaying any discussion of this issue by insisting that the country’s security matters come first.”

Shan leader Yawnghwe cites another favourite argument used by the junta to dodge Burma’s ethnic question: “The generals are now saying that without the military – under democratic rule – the majority Burmans will dominate the non-Burmans in parliament and by parliamentary means.”

The military’s argument, he adds, is that “they are protecting the rights of the ‘national races,’ seeing to it that they are not victimised by the majority Burmans”.