RIGHTS: Activists Accuse Thai Govt of Dancing to Burma’s Tune

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 26 2002 (IPS) - Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s policy on Burma is coming under increasing fire from human rights activists, who say Bangkok is bowing to Rangoon’s wishes by avoiding references to its rights abuses during bilateral talks this week

This attitude, they assert, continues to erode Thailand’s reputation as one of the few countries in South-east Asia that upholds human rights.

“The impression created is that Thailand is willing to protect the war criminals in Burma,” charges Sunai Phasuk of Forum-Asia, a Bangkok-based regional human rights watchdog.

“While the Burmese government is being condemned internationally for human rights abuses, including rape, the Thai government is not raising its voice,” Sunai said.

According to a sarcastic barb doing the rounds here among Burmese living in exile on this side of the border, when it comes to Burma, ‘Thai foreign policy is made in Rangoon, not in Bangkok’.

“There are increasing signs that Rangoon is dictating terms and the Thai government is willing to follow,” says one Burmese activist who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It is disturbing, this policy of appeasement.”

These reactions come in the wake of formal talks here on Wednesday between Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai and his Burmese counterpart, Win Aung.

Human rights groups, including Forum Asia, were hoping that Surakiart would use his meeting with Win Aung to discuss rights issues in addition to the topics the Thaksin administration is more warm to, like trade and business opportunities.

But that outcome was not to be. “The meeting was a good opportunity for Thailand to display its human rights commitments, but as we saw, the Thaksin government has focused more on economic issues and human rights has become of less importance,” says Srirak Plipat of the Thai office of Amnesty International, the global human rights lobby.

Surakiart was quoted in the Thai press on Thursday saying the discussions had focused on drug trafficking, illegal immigration, consular services and cross-border trade.

In sharp contrast to the Thai government’s position on Burma’s human rights record was the message coming from the International Burma Summit, held on Sep. 22 to 23 in Copenhagen, the Danish capital.

“The International Burma Summit has been organised to focus attention not only on the truth of what is happening today in Burma but what we, as an international community, must do in response,” declared a statement released by a high-profile panel at the summit.

The panel included Mairead Maguire, a Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern Ireland, Helle Degn, the human rights commissioner for the Baltic states and former Danish minister for development aid, and Asda Jayanama, a former Thai ambassador to the United Nations.

They were unequivocal in their condemnation of Burma, which has been renamed Myanmar by the ruling military junta, for gross human rights violations.

Particularly troubling to the panel was “compelling evidence of brutal and systematic sexual violence against women by the military throughout Burma”.

In May, the two bodies monitoring rights abuses among the Shan, one of Burma’s many ethnic groups, released a chilling report about the scale of sexual violence women in the Shan areas have been subjected to.

Up to 625 girls and women in the Shan areas have been raped by the Burmese military between 1996 and 2001, the report, ‘License to Rape’ said. Under international law, such violations are deemed a war crime.

The authors of the report, The Shan Human Rights Foundation and The Shan Women’s Action Network, accuse the Burmese army of officially condoning rape as part of their anti-insurgency activities.

Also troubling, according to participants at the Copenhagen meeting, is the 1,400 political prisoners currently languishing in Burmese detention centres, many of whom had been incarcerated for their work as democracy and human rights activists.

The prisoners range from students, monks and activists from political parties opposed to the junta to those belonging to ethnic groups and elected members of parliament.

“Political prisoners have been subjected to severe beatings, suffocation, the denial of decent food, water and rest, and other forms of torture and mistreatment,” said the statement issued after the meeting.

In early May, Burma’s military rulers came in for some praise after freeing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from 19 months of house arrest. The U.N.-brokered deal also resulted in the Nobel Peace laureate being allowed the freedom to travel across the country for her political work.

The junta has also earned praise for releasing some of its political prisoners – some 400 to date.

Burma has been under military rule since a 1962 coup put the generals in government. In the intervening 40 years, the military has violated human rights, including killing hundreds of pro-democracy activists, imprisoning political opponents, forcing members of ethnic communities into slave labour and suppressing free expression.

But in its first year in office last year, the Thaksin administration turned its eye away from Rangoon’s dismal human rights record in an effort to pen a new chapter in Thailand’s foreign policy toward Burma.

Bangkok’s emphasis was to develop warmer ties between the two countries, with trade and business as the cement.

Weeks ago, Bangkok displayed how far it would go to retain its alliance with its northern neighbour, when it ordered police crackdowns on activists and victims of rights abuses from Burma who had sought refuge in Thailand.

“Burmese dissidents feel upset and are worried by the Thai government’s policies,” says Min Zin, an associate editor at ‘The Irrawaddy’, a Thai-based monthly journal that focuses on Burmese and South-east Asian issues.