Myanmar: Rhetoric and reality of Indian democracy

Mukul Sharma
The Hindu, August 9

When did you last hear the Indian government making a strong case against Myanmar’s military rulers?

Union of Myanmar (Burma). Head of State: General Than Shwe. Head of Government: General Soe Win. More than three decades of brutal military rule. You see them at Rajghat in Delhi on October 25, 2004, when Than Shwe paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi; at the National Defence Academy in Khadakvasla; at the Tata Motors Plant in Pune; and many other places. You find Ministers, like Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Secretaries, and Army Chiefs visiting them, with full kitties. Recognising and legitimising a brutal military rule is becoming a natural, practical, economical act in India today, either in the name of an official ‘look east’ policy and to flush out armed groups in the Northeast or to tap natural gas reserves and develop bilateral trade relations.

These myriad social practices of acknowledgement to the Myanmar military rule are leading to a new formation, or rather malformation, of the Indian state and its diplomacy. A global India, with high growth and regional-international ambitions, has to move away from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s political opposition, who has been under arrest for more than 15 years intermittently since1989. It has to forget about U Win Tin, a journalist who is serving a 20-year sentence for writing and publishing “magazines, news bulletins and papers that were all against the government.” It has to leave in the lurch San San New, who is serving a 10-year prison term on the basis that she allegedly gave information to foreign journalists and diplomats “against or critical of the government.”

Convenience over conviction

Truth has not changed with time and calendar. In fact, across the political spectrum, civil society, and media, there is support for the democratic movement in Myanmar. People sympathise with Ms. Suu Kyi, who lived and studied in New Delhi when her mother was the first Burmese Ambassador in the 1960s. However, our government today prefers convenience to conviction, and values privileges over principles. Everyday our new country emerges on the pages of newspapers and in the statements of our political, economic, and military leaders, with its changing appearance and appeasement, with its new opportunism driving various deals, of course without its people.

It was reported on November 22, 2006, that Air Chief Marshal S. P. Tyagi made a three-day visit to Myanmar to discuss several arms offers made almost two years ago by his predecessor, Air Chief Marshal S. Krishnaswamy. These included a comprehensive fighter aircraft upgrade programme and the sale of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) built advanced light helicopters, Bharat Electronics (BEL) radars, airborne radio equipment and surveillance electronics. On October 11, 2006, Jane’ s Defence Weekly reported that negotiations for the proposed “arms for military co-operation swap” were conducted during a September 21, 2006, visit to Myanmar by India’s Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt. During his two-day trip, he held discussions with the Vice Senior General Maung Aye, and other senior Myanmar military officers, focussing on New Delhi providing Yangon T-55 main battle tanks, which the Indian Army was retiring, armoured personal carriers, 105 mm light artillery guns, mortars and the locally designed advanced light helicopter at a ‘special’ price.

Himal South Asian wrote in February 2007 that since 1998, India has extended more than $100 million in credit to the Burmese regime, including for upgrading the Rangoon-Mandalay railway line. In addition, it has contributed $27 million to the building of the 160-kilometre Tamu-Kalewa highway in Sagaing Division.

India has also emerged as Myanmar’s second largest market after Thailand, absorbing 25 per cent of the country’s total exports, and it hopes to double bilateral trade to $1 billion per annum in the next few years. India is also providing training to Myanmar’s armed forces and helping it build border infrastructure. As a part of its energy strategy, it also plans to buy natural gas from Myanmar. This would benefit the military regime millions of dollars annually.

On July 16, 2007, Amnesty International and Saferworld released its report titled “Indian helicopters for Myanmar: making a mockery of the EU arms embargo?,” saying that the Government of India may transfer military helicopters, including the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH), to the government of Myanmar as part of the two countries’ increasing military cooperation. Such transfers risk undermining existing EU and U.S. sanctions and arms embargoes on Myanmar.

These umpteen examples of the recent past exemplify how the same thing is being repeated over and over again, creating a ‘neat’ cushioned regime. However, our government continues to practice the virtues of denial, and keeps reiterating lies in these years. When did you last hear the Indian government making a strong case against Myanmar’s military rulers? Have you heard of the cancelling of any trip by Indian dignitaries to Myanmar, for example, against the arrest of U Aung Thein, a 77-year-old very respectable member of the National League for Democracy’s central committee. He was arrested with three others in April 2006, and all four were sentenced in July to 20 years imprisonment? U Aung Thein was said to have ‘confessed’ to possessing a satellite telephone used to speak to NLD leaders outside the country. When were our leaders in SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) or ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) seen trying to push for some democratic agenda on Myanmar?

If you live in Myanmar, you can be forced into unpaid labour. Many people are subjected to it, mainly by the army, to build roads, military camps, and infrastructure projects. You can be forced to leave your home. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been compelled to leave their villages, as part of a strategy to cut off support to armed opposition groups. Whole villages have been razed, obliterating people’s homes and possessions. You can be denied citizenship, even if your family has lived there for generations. You can be locked up for years for writing a poem or acting on behalf of political prisoners. Thousands of government critics have been imprisoned for peaceful activities, like writing histories or poems, or taking other steps to defend human rights. You can be locked up for years without knowing why, with no right to go to court. You can be tortured, even to death, by the police and the army.

And, you cannot complain. If you do, you may be further tortured and imprisoned. Myanmar authorities consistently reject reports of human rights violations, whether from Myanmar citizens or by international officials like the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, as politically motivated propaganda. The Indian authorities speak in a similar, twisted tongue about the defence deals as ‘completely baseless’; asking not to attach ‘much credence to reports’; stating that ‘India does give defence support but the equipment is not offensive’; or that ‘the matter is delicate…. We have to keep Myanmar in good humour’. However, the facts cannot be muted, as lines between rhetoric and reality are clearly visible. Standing neither here nor there, sometimes in the middle of the road is dangerous.

You can be knocked down by traffic from both sides. The Indian government has to state on whose side it is, and take clear-cut positions. Truth shall prevail, says our motto. The important question is, how? The coalition Indian government, bound by a common minimum programme, must stop its vacillation and join the campaign to end repression and dictatorship in Myanmar.

(The writer is Director, Amnesty International India.)