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BURMA: Asian Highway to Disaster?

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 26 2007 (IPS) - A regional U.N. body that claims to care about Asia&#39s economically weak and marginalised is being taken to task for helping pave the way to achieve the opposite – strengthening a military dictatorship with development projects on the back of people under its oppressive grip.

The accusation levelled at the Bangkok-based Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) adds another feature to the on-going debate about the implications of international development and humanitarian assistance to Burma. At the heart of this dispute is the Asian Highway, a flagship initiative of ESCAP that aims to link 32 countries across Asia through a network of roads.

&#39&#39ESCAP is helping the (Burmese regime) get funds&#39&#39 for building a roadway that has involved &#39&#39forced labour and land confiscation,&#39&#39 Kevin Heppner, founder of the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG), charged this week. &#39&#39You cannot achieve sustainable development through forced labour. You only create more poverty.&#39&#39

A section of the road that cuts through eastern Burma, home to the country&#39s Karen ethnic community, has been built over rice fields for which no compensation was given to the farmers whose lands were appropriated by the junta, reveals a 121-page report released by KHRG. &#39&#39Local villagers were forced to construct both the road and the drainage ditches running alongside.&#39&#39

The revelations in the report, &#39Development by Decree: The politics of poverty and control in Karen State,&#39 is only the latest charge of forced labour that the Burmese junta is being hit with. Such brutal measures to build other roads, construct buildings for the military and farm confiscated lands across this South-east Asian country have been regularly highlighted and condemned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Victims of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the Burmese junta calls itself, are largely villagers from Burma&#39s ethnic minorities living along the country&#39s borders. The Karens have been particularly targeted because the Burmese military is locked in a decades-long ethnic conflict with Karen rebels.

ESCAP officials, however, appeared unaware of the human rights violations being perpetrated under the guise of development in Myanmar, the new name by which the SPDC calls Burma. &#39&#39We have not received any reports or even claims that forced labour is being used anywhere in the development of the Asian Highway,&#39&#39 Barry Cable, director of ESCAP&#39s transport and tourism division, told IPS. &#39&#39In the development of highways around the region, confiscation of land is not used by the governments.&#39&#39

KHRG&#39s criticism of this U.N.-driven initiative in Burma is another broadside fired at the Asian Highway following the intergovernmental agreement to create this 141,000 km-long network of roads that came into force in July 2005. ESCAP has already been accused by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of paying limited attention to the social costs of this highway, including the potential explosion of HIV/AIDS rates across the continent due to easier cross-border movement.

Other U.N. agencies working in Burma were also not spared by the KHRG, an NGO that has carved a name for championing the concerns of villagers in rural Burma. The list included the United Nations Children&#39s Fund (UNICEF), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), all of which were accused of helping the SPDC strengthen its grip on already traumatised rural communities under the guise of &#39&#39development.&#39&#39

&#39&#39Development under the SPDC is synonymous with control,&#39&#39 says Stephen Hull, a co-author of the report, which was based on interviews conducted between November 2005 to December 2006. &#39&#39Villagers in the Karen State reject development imposed on them.&#39&#39

As troubling is the lack of justice for the victims. &#39&#39Villagers living under SPDC control do not dare to complain because of fear,&#39&#39 Nanlerwah, a Karen human rights activist, told IPS. &#39&#39The U.N. does not have a presence in these areas.&#39&#39

This latest contribution to the debate on aid to a repressive regime – with some human rights groups charging that only the junta and not the people profit from humanitarian and development assistance – even prompted a carefully-worded response from U.N. officials caught in the line of fire, in Burma.

&#39&#39Overall, the challenge the report presents is one that the U.N. is fully aware of,&#39&#39 Charles Petrie, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Burma, said during a telephone interview from Rangoon. &#39&#39We regret, however, that there was no opportunity for us to discuss with the authors some of the allegations made against U.N. agencies, which were incorrect.&#39&#39

The debate on aid and financial assistance to Burma has become increasingly polarised, with a continuing flow of reports fuelling more heat. In mid-April, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in the United States revealed that the Burmese junta has come in the way of development and humanitarian assistance meant for the largely impoverished Burmese people. &#39&#39The regime has impeded U.N. food, development and health programs,&#39&#39 the GAO noted in a report, adding further that in 2006, the junta &#39&#39published formal guideline to restrict international activities in Burma.&#39&#39

Last December, on the other hand, the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank, argued in a study against moves to link humanitarian assistance to political conditions in Burma. &#39&#39Undermining of humanitarian aid by protagonists on all sides, however, not only goes against international humanitarian principles but could also rekindle a new cycle of conflict and humanitarian emergencies that would make any prospect of positive political change even more remote,&#39&#39 ICG noted in its report, &#39Myanmar: New Threats to Humanitarian Aid.&#39

The decision by three respected international bodies – the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – to pull out of Burma or suspend operations in the country due to the SPDC&#39s interference has also not been lost on those caught in this debate.

For its part, though, the SPDC appears unfazed, as it continues to spread aid and development assistance according to the only model it is familiar with. &#39&#39The military follows a top-down development approach across the country,&#39&#39 says Win Min, a Burma researcher at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand. &#39&#39The military government uses development to control the country.&#39&#39