Burma Out!! : OLYMPICS YES - BUT BU

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Subject: Burma Out!! : OLYMPICS YES - BUT BURMA OUT!

RE: OLYMPICS YES - BUT BURMA OUT!
3507 words and 9 pages

PLAYING FOOTSY WITH FASCISTS

"If the world had done to Burma even a fraction of what we did to South
Africa and Vietnam, the SLORC's army, like the other evil autocracies which
have passed or are passing into history, would not have been able to hold on."

An extract from the address given by The Honourable Justice Marcus Einfeld
AO QC, keynote speaker at the "Restoring the Rule of Law in Burma"
Conference held at NSW Parliament House, Sydney 6th August 1999.   


The continuing denial of democracy in Burma is not a localised problem, but
one which we must take on as our own in the quest to bring democracy,
justice and human rights into the mainstream agenda of every country in the
world.  Australia cannot continue in its reluctance to take other countries
to task for flagrant human rights violations.  It is our responsibility and
duty to bring our expertise and experience to regimes, such as that of
Burma, in order to ensure an effective promotion of human rights in a
country where the military junta, despite democratic elections in 1990,
continues to deny and trample on the most basic of peoples' rights.  

It is 4 years since democracy leader and Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi,
was supposedly released after 6 years of what was called house arrest but
was actually the torture of isolation and forced separation from husband,
the late Michael Aris, and children, friends and colleagues.  The military
junta held out Suu Kyi's release as proof of its intention to comply with
the law and restore democracy to Burma.  Of course they did no such thing.
They did not even restore Suu Kyi's rights.  The so-called 'constructive
engagement' policy of what was then Burma's State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) - whose very  the Insein Prison, prior to a visit by the Red
Cross.  In reaction to her allegations, a junta statement stated, or more
appropriately, threatened, that her comments were "counter-productive" for
prisoners and their families.  The regime is simply not prepared to grant
political concessions.  The generals do not recognise, and regularly trample
on, the most basic of the people's rights.

The democratic world advocates a constitution for Burma which establishes a
democratic political system and guarantees their fundamental human rights.
But the SLORC will have nothing of such an enlightened popular approach to
the future of the country.  According to the generals, no one but the
military can know what is good for the people.

The SLORC's idea of a new democracy was its 'National Convention'.  However,
those who may participate in its works were restricted.  For instance, the
SLORC maintains to this very day that the largely Muslim Rohingya people
from Western Burma do not belong to the 135 indigenous ethnic races of the
country.  Insisting that they are illegal immigrants who entered Arakan
during the British colonial period, the regime precludes them from
participation in the future political process.  Yet a few years ago they
negotiated the return of thousands of Rohingyas from Bangladesh where they
had fled as refugees.  I was there in Bangladesh to meet them.  Their
treatment by the Burmese regime was appalling and was only stopped by
international pressure for their return.  The SLORC has its own ideas about
refugees as about everything else.

To facilitate the National Convention, the self appointed self perpetuating
junta negotiated a ceasefire with some of the various minority groups which
had been at war with the State.  The ceasefire gave the participating
opposition groups the right to exclude the army from its territory, the idea
being to divide the opposition groups and sort out differences after the
country was operating under a new constitution.  It is not difficult to
imagine what will happen to these unfortunate groups then.  However, the
minority groups who opposed the SLORC and did not come on board the
ceasefire before the National Convention were not represented amongst its
number.  To be heard on the issue of the people's constitution, they had to
abjectly surrender.

Let there be no doubt.  The junta's National Convention is, was and has
always been a scheme by the military dictatorship to perpetuate its control.
The military brought together basically handpicked delegates, pretending
that they were representatives of the people and of recognised political
parties, and directed them to adopt principles that will entrench the power
of the military.  The future president must have long military service, and
25% of the seats in each house of the legislature must be reserved for the
armed forces.  The delegates are precluded from discussing the Convention
and policies outside the formal committee meetings; all speeches and reports
to the committees are vetted before presentation.  

Fear is the major bar to opposition for the junta's own proposals for the
constitution so that only those proposals are discussed and approved.  It is
unarguably clear that one of the SLORC's goals in the National Convention is
to retain a dominant role in all future governments in Burma, and thereby to
frustrate the will of the people.  And at the present rate the Convention is
dealing with the draft constitution, it will be meeting for years, even
decades.  How better can the people's aspirations be denied?

The total destruction of the Karen headquarters in January 1995, the murder
of many Karen people at Manerplaw and Kawmoora adjacent to the Thai border
and the ongoing offensive against the Karen National Union guerillas,
causing some 300 refugees, mostly women, elders and children, to flee in
June this year (Burmese News Update June 1999) represents the brutal use of
a national army against its own people.  I have always thought that national
armies were designed to protect the people, not cower, threaten and wage war
on them.  This is a military which is allocated fully 50% of its nation's
budget despite the chronic impoverishment of the people and the country
having no external enemies.  We are talking of the largest and best equipped
military in Asia.  Who else but its country's own people are they being
conscripted and equipped to fight?

 The outrageous inhuman practice of "portering" by which men, women and
children are conscripted by the regime for mountainous labouring work while
living in torturous conditions on near starvation rations continues.
Perhaps worst of all, the whole country is overrun by drugs, corruption and
a widespread absence of basic services for ordinary people such as health,
education, housing and work, not to mention human freedom.  For those who
have work, an average government employee's daily wage is said to provide
the capacity to purchase a mere 2 eggs.  Burma is also one of the world's
largest producers of opium and heroin, and in the first five months of this
year, seizures of stimulant tablets doubled compared to the same period in 1998.
The fact is that in less than a generation the SLORC and its internal and
external allies have reduced one of the richest countries in the world to
one of the poorest.  No wonder the regime is now actively seeking investment
from western commercial enterprises and their professional representatives.
Regrettably quite a number have been seduced, as have some national leaders.

But both nations and individuals, including former Prime Ministers of this
country, should not mix their search for financial reward or advancement of
their own or others' commercial interests with apparently dispassionate
human rights commentary which is ultimately quite false and merely condones
shocking abuses.  Those who fail this simple test in Burma at the very end
of this most infamous of centuries should beware of the unattractive company
they are joining.

The overall human rights situation in the country continues to deteriorate.
A report to the UN General Assembly by a special human rights investigator
quite recently told of summary executions, torture and rape by the military
with impunity.  The military has asserted that such accusations are
unfounded and that nothing can be done unless the victims bring their cases
to the authorities concerned.  But they will not allow me or other leaders
or international organisations or media to investigate the reports or
advocate the cases brought to our attention.

Refugees

Today Burma is the largest refugee-producing country in South East Asia.
More than 100,000 Burmese are already living over the Thai border, most
being ethnic minority groups who have fled the fighting between the military
junta and the armed rebel groups seeking autonomy, with the safety of the
Karen refugees particularly pressing.  Last month the Huay Kalok refugee
camp, home to about 8,000 refugees, mostly ethnic Karens, was burned to the
ground for the third time in the past three years by pro-Rangoon armed
troops allegedly assisted by Burmese government soldiers (Burma News Update
July 1999).

In its 1999 Country Report, Amnesty International said of Burmese refugees:

Although Thailand gave refuge to thousands of refugees from neighbouring
Cambodia and Myanmar, thousands more Burmese asylum-seekers and refugees
continued to be arrested for "illegal immigration".  One Karen refugee was
beaten to death by security forces.  The security forces ill-treated
demonstrators and detainees.  Conditions in places of detention amounted to
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.  Thirteen people were sentenced to
death; one person was executed.

As Janelle Saffin stated in her recent article, "Legal Protection for
Refugees from Burma", both Thailand and Bangladesh, as member States of the
UN, have responsibilities towards the Burmese refugees who cross the border
into their States, despite their not being parties to the 1951 Geneva
Refugees Convention.  I know that the Thai Government now allows the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees a role in some camps and that it is considering
signing the Convention.  I know that individual Bangladeshis behaved quite
heroically in helping the Rohingya refugees 8 years ago.  But neither the
Thai nor the Bangladeshi Governments carry out their obligations as they
should to Burmese people fleeing oppression running into many hundreds of
thousands.  

As a member of the United Nations, Burma is bound not to create refugees.
Yet the SLORC chooses even to flout this simple principle to the detriment
not only of Thailand and Bangladesh but of India and China as well.  It has
done so with the connivance of ASEAN who has not only not criticised this
conduct but has actually rewarded it by admitting Burma to membership.  At
the very least, the governments of the ASEAN countries might call on the
receiving countries to offer asylum to the refugees, and provide them with
economic assistance and allow the High Commissioner for Refugees to operate
in their countries to care for refugees while they do not have full
residency rights.

Commercial relations
The fate of 40 million Burmese is not less urgent than that of 4 million
Cambodians, a million or so Haitians, or the population of Somalia.  There
should be widespread outrage at what was once a free and rich country being
turned into a mass poverty-stricken concentration camp.  Virtually nothing
is published or earned in Burma today.  What newspapers exist are crude
government mouthpieces.  What writers exist are in prison.  What local
economy there is largely consists of barter and sale of natural resources.
Like Cambodia's Pol Pot, the SLORC and its cohorts have turned Burma into a
backwater hell and disguised it all as a pantomime of charming touristic
folklore.

Yet businessmen of democratic countries still operate their peculiar brand
of exploitative amoral or immoral profiteering.  If the world had done to
Burma even a fraction of what we did to South Africa and Vietnam, the
SLORC's army, like the other evil autocracies which have passed or are
passing into history, would not have been able to hold on.  Instead, the
world has taken refuge in the withholding of official aid while allowing the
private sector to hone in on the opportunities thrown up by the desperate
plight of a regime whose priority is the repression and vandalising of
peaceable and kindly human beings.

To deal with the problems posed by the SLORC, the diplomats established a
policy of what they called "constructive engagement".  The US Administration
has been asked to interpret the phrase to mean most favoured nation
treatment.  The SLORC favoured?  By whom?  For what?  None of this nonsense
has or has ever had a hope of changing the SLORC.  Human rights are or ought
to be no less an integral part of foreign policy than trade.

The Burmese leaders, with the hated and ostensibly overthrown military
dictator Ne Win, now in his 80s, still around in spirit if not in body, know
the free world well.  They know that without the easy flow of information,
our politicians, journalists and people will continue to pretend that
everything is good and safe.  The hundreds of thousands of people who have
sought refuge from this regime, as well as the millions who are its internal
prisoners, are the hapless victims of this pretence.

When will the world ever learn not to play footsy with fascists?
Appeasement never achieves anything other than more agony and human
suffering.  Such regimes only leave office through war or under intense
pressure, both national and international.  Like all bullies, they are
ultimately cowardly when bullied themselves.  Although the prestigious
London-based Institute of Strategic Studies has called for international
troops to be sent to Burma, the only realistic tactics presently available
to us non-Burmese are exposure, embarrassment and isolation of the SLORC and
the strengthening of the democratic resistance.

It is true that the first victims of economic and other sanctions are almost
always the innocent and the poor.  But their physical and emotional plight
is usually already so bad that it can hardly get worse.  This is certainly
so in Burma today.  The continuing anguish of the Burmese people at the
hands of the SLORC is merely creating ever greater misery and devastation.
On the other hand, externally caused suffering for the purpose of securing
their freedom and independence has a manifestly noble goal which will
assuredly end their agonies in time.  

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written:

	International pressure can change the situation in Burma.  Tough sanctions,
not constructive engagement, finally brought the release of Nelson Mandela
and the dawn of a new era in my country.  This is the language that must be
spoken with tyrants - for, sadly, it is the only language they understand.

Prime Minister-in-exile Sein Win, a cousin of Suu Kyi, has been reported as
saying that ordinary Burmese would not be affected by sanctions because the
unofficial economy would continue to operate.  He has argued strongly for
sanctions as the only effective way of reducing the power of the junta.  I
entirely agree with him.

Steps towards Transition to Government of the democratic forces of Burma

At the request of Prime Minister Sein Win and his Burmese government in
exile - the legitimate elected government of Burma - an independent
corporation of Australian Judges and lawyers called Australian Legal
Resources International (ALRI), which supplies legal infrastructure and
democratic capacity-building to developing countries and emerging
democracies, is now hard at work preparing the authorative Transition to
Government of the democratic forces of Burma.  The first goal of the Burma
Transition to Democracy Project is to build the capacity of the National
Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) to develop and implement
the procedures that will be necessary for a successful transition to
democracy in Burma and create a blueprint for the transition process.  The
second goal is to increase awareness amongst the Burmese democracy groups
about the issues involved in the transition to democracy and facilitate
their participation in the development and implementation of the process.
The entire process is also designed to build confidence within and outside
Burma to the capacity of the Burmese people to establish an effective
democracy in their country which enshrines and protects their human rights.

The project will cover such matters as the business of government, the
making of policy, the legislative process, the role of parliament and its
members, the courts and the legal system, the workings of the civil service,
the establishment of civilian police, monitoring and enforcement of human
rights, reconciliation, the role of the military in a civilian society, and
many other matters.  We are confident that this project will assist the
return of Burma to democracy and the rescue of its people from fascism.

Conclusion

The nine years since the SLORC refused to honour the landslide victory of
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy is much more than nine years too
long.  Attempts by former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans to get
the ASEAN nations to put further Burmese participation in the international
community of nations on strict conditions deserves special acknowledgment
and strong approval.  But Mr Evans' views have not won favour with the
present ASEAN leaders.  We must therefore do much more.  Whatever its good
intentions, a policy of sitting on the fence by neither approving nor
disapproving trade amounts to a policy of neutrality towards the systematic
violation of human rights and the institutionalisation of military rule
oppressing democracy. 

It never ceases to amaze me how political and business leaders can sup with
the devil, and clothe it with good intentions.  The idea that free peoples
anywhere could hold a regime like the SLORC in anything other than contempt
is outrageous.  They simply do not operate on any standard that could
remotely be called fair or decent.  The toadying friendliness of the west
has clearly been interpreted by them as a blank cheque to continue their
revolting behaviour.  The evidence is now incontrovertible.  They are
getting worse, not better.

I call upon all Australians and good people everywhere to get behind efforts
to win the freedom of the Burmese people from the yoke of oppression and
suppression.  People who sanctify the human condition and cherish human
dignity as we do, are simply not permitted to allow this level of brutality
to be carried out on our doorstep.  And gatherings such as this protect and
advance human morality and raise the hopes of the people for release from
their tyranny.  We must protest loudly and often to protect her and ensure
the safety of Suu Kyi and her democratic colleagues before it is too late.
We must bolster and support the forces of social democracy; we must
tirelessly strive for the establishment of a constitutional order based on
human decency and justice; and we must call on all the genius and ingenuity
we regularly use in other fields to ensure that our voices are heard.

But whatever else we feel we can or cannot do to bring about a return to
democratic rule in Burma - and our influence and power is not insignificant
- we must above all not forget the people in their suffering.  We call out
to the people of Burma - be strong and steadfast.  Stand straight and proud.
We are with you in your struggle to be free.  This battle will be won.  The
SLORC can and will be beaten.  The Burmese people can and will be set free.
Every Australian, indeed every decent human being, must do whatever is
necessary to help them bring it about. 

BURMA - RULE OF LAW AND REFUGEES
Restoring the Rule of Law in Burma
The Jubilee Room
NSW Parliament House
Macquarie Street, Sydney
Friday 6 August 1999
Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, Australian Capital,  Territory
Supreme Court and Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Officer in the Order of
Australia, AUSTCARE's Ambassador for Refugees, UNICEF's Ambassador for
Children, National Vice President, International Commission of
ew-smtp1.ihug.com.au

Follow the plea by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the appreciations 
of HH the Dalai Lama, the Shan Democratic Union,  film maker John 
Pilger, the Free Burma Coalition,  author Alan Clements, Dennis 
Skinner MP, Tony Benn MP, Ann Clwyd MP, Congress-woman  
Maxine Waters,  Socialist Workers' Party,  Dr and Welsh rugby  
star JPR Williams, Hendrix  bassist Noel Redding,  S African jazz 
pianist Abdullah Ibrahim,  All Burma Students Democratic 
Organisation,  All Burma Students Democratic Front, Tasmanian 
Trades & Labour Council, Tim Gopsill, editor. 
The.Journalist@xxxxxxxxxx, and numerous others.   

Supporting a Genuine war upon drugs and human rights abuse.
Sydney 2000 : Burma Out! 
http://www.mihra.org/2k/burma.htm

Music Industry Human Rights Association
http://www.mihra.org / policy.office@xxxxxxxxx 

Rachel and James http:www.mihra.org/2k/rachel.htm
Union Action http://www.mihra.org/2k/Union.htm

Founded during UN50. Mihra's roots are in music and anti-racism and 
was first in line in calling for a sports boycott of Burma for the Sydney
2000 Olympic Games. Mihra also advances protection of creators rights 
in an anti-cultural market, currently 93.8% monopolised by the recording  
/ publishing Grand Cartel. 

Major solo work "Piece of Mind". With orchestra, Holland 69. same  
time as Beatles "Abbey Road".   http://onlinetv.com/rogerbunn.html
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