Stop feeding the generals

By IWR Frontline November 21, 2009

Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK writes about how – in the absence of a global arms embargo – China, Russia, Israel, Ukraine and others armed one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world: Burma.

In the case of Burma, rhetoric and reality are very far apart, not only in terms of propaganda from the military dictatorship, which is only to be expected, but also in the case of rhetoric from the international community. The European Union, the United States and Australia, for example, have boasted of tough sanctions against Burma. At the same time, Burma’s generals and its Asian neighbours complain about the sanctions imposed and say sanctions do not work.

The reality is far from both these arguments. As recently as October 2009, Aung San Suu Kyi used sanctions as leverage to reopen dialogue with Burma’s generals, demonstrating they have an important role to play. Despite this, the tough sanctions that the EU boasts of are mostly paper tigers. And until 2008, none of the US sanctions impacted on the generals’ three main sources of income: exports of gas, timber and gems.

However, the most dramatic example of the distance between the sanctions debate rhetoric and reality is the fact that there is not even a United Nations mandated arms embargo against Burma.

By any standards the dictatorships that have ruled Burma for the past forty-seven years have been among the most brutal in the world. General Ne Win’s rule, between 1962 and 1988, is perhaps best known for its isolationist policies and brutal suppression of any dissent – arresting and torturing opponents and even going so far as blowing up a university building being used by students organising peaceful protests. Less well known publicly but certainly known by governments and the UN, was the horrific slaughter carried out against ethnic civilians in the name of counter insurgency operations.

Around 1968, Ne Win’s regime introduced what it called the four cuts policy: targeting civilians in areas of conflict, aiming to cut supplies, information, recruits and food. Such a policy is a blatant breach of the Geneva Conventions, though Burma was not a signatory to any of the conventions at the time. Villages were burned, women raped, men tortured and executed.

During the period of Ne Win’s rule, East and West alike continued to supply arms despite the record of serious human rights abuses, including campaigns against ethnic groups in Burma that deliberately targeted civilians, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes as unknown tens of thousands more were killed. It was only after a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 when the Burmese army opened fire on peaceful protesters in Rangoon and other cities, individual countries started to introduce arms embargoes. We will never know how many people lost their lives in those protests as bodies were taken from the streets and hospitals and destroyed, but estimates range from a bare minimum of 3000 to well over 10,000.

A new military dictatorship took control of Burma in September 1988, naming itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council, later becoming State Peace and Development Council. This regime would prove to be even more brutal than its predecessor. As its priority was its own survival, the regime decided to double the size of the army and modernise its equipments. This army was to be used for one purpose only: internal repression.

The new regime opened up to international trade and investment, but, rather than trying to develop the economy to promote economic growth and improve the living standards of the people, investment and trade were almost solely focussed on natural resource extraction and joint ventures that would put foreign exchange directly into the pockets of the generals.

Although the US, the EU and a small number of other countries had imposed arms embargoes, there were no significant economic sanctions. Western companies – including UNOCAL (now Chevron) and Total Oil – pumped billions of dollars of investment into Burma. As a result, North American and European countries helped pay for arms, even though they would not sell them directly.

As there was no UN mandated arms embargo, there were plenty of countries willing to keep supplying Burma’s newly enriched generals. China, Russia, Israel, Ukraine and others ensured Burma’s enlarged military – now standing at around 400,000 soldiers – was equipped with modern weaponry, paid for largely by Western investment. At one point, it was estimated that the generals were spending eighty percent of the government’s budget on the military. The figure is thought to average forty percent. Spending on health and education actually fell despite increased trade and investment, while unpublished figures estimate ninety percent of Burma’s population lives in poverty.

Ethnic groups in Burma were the main targets of the bigger, better trained, better equipped army. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingyas – a Muslim minority mostly living in the Arakan state – were attacked and forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. Attacks against civilians in Karen and Karenni states were forcing tens of thousands of people across the border into Thailand. The army used hundreds of thousands of people as slave labour, which the International Labour Organisation would later describe as a crime against humanity. Burmese troops also invaded neighbouring Thailand, in order to attack refugees sheltering along the Thailand-Burma border.

The human rights abuses in the early 1990s clearly fell within the remit of the UN Security Council, constituting a threat to international peace and security. The UN continued to document abuses taking place. In 1998, Rajsoomer Lallah – the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma – reported on human rights abuses in eastern Burma: “These violations have been so numerous and consistent over the past years as to suggest that they are not simply isolated or the acts of individual misbehaviour by middle and lower-rank officers but are rather the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.” However, still no action was taken.

Since the brutal suppression of monk-led protests in September 2007, the issue of a UN mandated arms embargo began to creep up the international agenda. Once again, it had taken the sight of people being shot on the streets of Rangoon to provoke international outrage, despite abuses in ethnic areas being on a much greater scale than those committed by the soldiers in Rangoon. Monk leaders who escaped the brutal crackdown and were now in exile asked why it was still possible to supply Burma’s generals with arms. Support for the campaign for an arms embargo grew.

In February 2008, the British government publicly expressed its support for a global arms embargo. In April 2008, the EU added its voice, saying that it supported a global embargo. However, in typical EU fashion, words were not followed by action and no step was taken to build any support for an embargo.

Bizarrely, the demand for an embargo was even met with criticism or scepticism from some quarters. One argument was that the regime already had arms, so it would make little difference. This ignores two factors. The first practical one is that the generals are always looking for new and more powerful and effective weapons. The second is that an arms embargo – or, even the threat of an arms embargo – can be used as a powerful tool in diplomacy with Burma’s generals. This is another form of leverage to pressure them to enter into genuine dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic groups for the first time.

Another argument against has been a counsel of despair, that China and Russia would veto any resolution for an embargo at the security council. The position of Russia and China is critical. At present, there is no doubt that they would veto such a resolution. But, this is why organisations like Burma Campaign UK exist – to change things.

Burma Campaign UK is coordinating a campaign to build a global consensus for an arms embargo, as part of a long-term strategy to isolate Russia and China, making it harder for them to use their veto. So far thirty-one countries have publicly backed a UN arms embargo against Burma. In October 2009, an important milestone was passed when East Timor became the first Asian country to back an embargo.

Currently, there is a lot of wildly overoptimistic speculation that new US diplomacy and so-called elections in Burma due in 2010 could result in change. Again, reality and rhetoric are far apart. Attacks against ethnic people are on the increase and there are growing calls for the UN to set up a commission of inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma.

Burma’s generals do not want change. They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming from power. They are war criminals who commit crimes against humanity. In turn, those supplying them with weapons are complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity. A UN mandated arms embargo is the least we should be doing and until there is one the international community can not claim to have applied real pressure on the generals.♦

Mark Farmaner is Director, Burma Campaign UK. For more information about the campaign see: http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk

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