POLITICS-SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Regional Grouping Turns Screws on Burma

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 30 2005 (IPS) - The rumblings spreading through South-east Asian capitals against Burma’s military regime is taking on the quality of a long overdue confession – namely that a political principle considered sacroscant by the region’s governments has failed.

The principle that stands exposed is the idea of ”non-interference,” by which the 10 members who belong to the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to avoid commenting about the domestic political affairs of a fellow member.

As the recent weeks have revealed, some of the leading members of ASEAN are prepared to turn their backs on the non-interference principle because of Burma rapidly emerging as an economic and political liability.

This stems from the likelihood of Burma, which the junta renamed Myanmar, becoming the chairman of ASEAN in 2006 – a fact that is expected to damage the regional group’s international image. Already the U.S. government and the European Union, which have imposed sanctions against Burma, have issued warnings against the junta leading ASEAN.

April, in fact, will serve up two opportunities to gauge how deep such anti-junta sentiments are in the countries displaying their pro-democracy commitments.

Both parliamentarians and foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines will be gathering first in Manila and then in Cebu for two separate meetings.

In Manila, it will be a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) that begins on Apr. 3. At this gathering, due to attract about 1,500 lawmakers from Asia, Europe and the Americas, the focus will be on the state of democracy in the world.

Already, legislators from the Philippines have declared that they will use the occasion to support a move shaped by parliamentarians from other ASEAN countries, including Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, to prevent Burma from becoming the chairman of the regional grouping in 2006.

The reason that has fuelled such an unprecedented political coalition to openly flout the non-intervention principle is unequivocal: the Burmese junta has refused to give up its stranglehold on power and let democracy flourish.

Similar thinking appears to be behind the critical comments levelled against Rangoon by the Singaporean, Malaysian and Indonesian governments.

George Yeo, Singapore’s foreign minister, conveyed this new, stern tone towards Burma in early March. It was subsequently echoed by Nazri Abdul Aziz, a minister in the Malaysian prime minister’s office. Indonesia’s foreign office has also expressed similar dissatisfaction towards the lack of political reform in Burma.

Burma’s military leaders will get a taste of how serious this new tone is when ASEAN’s foreign ministers meet in the Philippines city of Cebu from Apr. 10-12.

The 10 members of ASEAN are Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

”The prospect of Burma becoming ASEAN’s chairman has become a catalyst for governments and legislators to act and display their pro-democracy credentials,” Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN), a regional human rights lobby, told IPS.

She views the gathering momentum to criticise the domestic political affairs in Burma as a ”turning point for ASEAN.” Most comforting is to see the ”non-interference principle being chipped away,” she admitted.

It is a move that will consequently earn the regional body some respect as ”finally measuring up to international human rights norms,” Boonthan Verawongse of the Asia division of Dignity International, a global human rights body, added during an interview.

”It was time that some ASEAN countries broke the culture of silence over Burma,” he asserted. ”Concerns about the lack of human rights and democracy in a country cannot be simply regarded as domestic matters.”

Yet this trend has its detractors among ASEAN members, not all of whom are guardians of human rights and democracy. After all, the region has two countries that are one-party states – communist ruled Laos and Vietnam – and a country ruled by an absolute monarch – Brunei. What is more, both Malaysia and Singapore still retain a few authoritarian features.

The countries urging caution against the interference of Burma’s political affairs include predictable ones such as Laos and Cambodia, whose questionable human rights records have been shielded by ASEAN’s non-interference policy.

Disappointing for human rights groups is Thailand’s position. Bangkok has refused to be part of the Malaysian-led campaign to pressure for change in Burma ahead of the 2006 deadline, despite this country being one of the region’s developing democracies. The government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is also protecting the pariah state by asserting the significance of the non-interference policy.

Such attitudes towards the non-interference policy are at odds with what it was meant to connote when ASEAN was founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. At the time, the countries pledged that the expression would mean not harbouring armed rebel groups in conflict with a fellow member nation.

But by the 1970s, the policy was given a new twist to protect the region’s strongmen and dictators, ranging from Indonesia’s president Suharto and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos to Singapore prime minister Lee Kwan Yew and Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad.

Burma’s strongman Senior General Than Shwe was a beneficiary of this trend when his country joined ASEAN in the mid-1990s. And out of it grew ASEAN’s policy of ”constructive engagement,” by which the regional body was hoping to protect Burma from international criticism and give it time to reform.

”We firmly believe quiet diplomacy to be the only way to deal with Myanmar,” a former Thai deputy foreign minister said during a speech about the merits of constructive engagement shortly after Burma became an ASEAN member in 1997.

But actual realities are a different matter. The twin policies of non-interference and constructive engagement have helped the junta remain in power and this was reflected over the weekend when Rangoon celebrated the country’s Armed Forces Day.

On that occasion, Burma’s strongman, Senior General Than Shwe, spoke of plans to usher in a ”disciplined” democracy soon, which, to human rights monitors is an euphemism for a democracy where the ”military rules without uniforms.”

”This proves that the policies of non-interference and constructive engagement have failed to produce change in Burma,” said Stothard. ”ASEAN is finally accepting reality.”