The Jakarta Post
Jared Genser, Washington, D.C.
Thu, 06/12/2008 10:18 AM Opinion
A month after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, more than one million people severely affected by the storm have yet to receive any food, water, or shelter, and the so-called "second wave" of dying from disease, thirst, and hunger has begun in earnest.
The international community is wondering if Indonesia, with its key role as the only ASEAN member of the UN Security Council and its strong relationship with the Burmese junta will help avert an even greater disaster or be left along with ASEAN being blamed for it.
In the aftermath of the cyclone, some 134,000 Burmese are now dead or missing -- over 40 percent of which are believed to be children. And the United Nations reported last Tuesday that only 49 percent of the storm's 2.4 million affected victims have received any humanitarian relief.
The junta refuses to allow the use of any foreign military helicopters to deliver aid, even from such friendly countries as Thailand and Singapore. Meanwhile, French, British, and American ships just offshore have been turned away with food, water, and personnel capable of helping hundreds of thousands.
More than 10 days after junta leader Gen. Than Shwe promised UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon that he would immediately allow in "all aid workers," to the affected areas, few have regular access.
This is no surprise to long-time observers of Myanmar. Over the years the junta has made countless promises to the UN, labeled "breakthroughs" contemporaneously by diplomats, that the junta later breaks.
For example, under immense pressure after last fall's Saffron Revolution, Myanmar committed to engage in meaningful negotiations with democracy-leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party and its allies won more than 80 percent of the vote in the country's 1990 democratic parliamentary elections.
After a series of meetings with a regime interlocutor, Than Shwe imposed unworkable conditions as a prerequisite for direct talks. By then the world's attention had waned and the talks fizzled, both because the regime has no desire to engage in talks and it feels no pressure to make real concessions.
While the UN secretary general, the Burmese regime, and allies of the junta have urged that the question of humanitarian aid not be "politicized," the regime itself is taking every advantage of the cyclone to make permanent its grip on power to the exclusion of helping its own people. As is often the case, distraction and delay in discussing the fundamental issues in Myanmar only serve the interests of the regime.
The recent extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest is perhaps the most high-profile example of this phenomenon. Notwithstanding the UN's four prior findings that her detention is illegal and that Myanmar law itself does not permit house arrest beyond five years, the junta decided to give her a sixth year under house arrest.
Further, in the days following the cyclone, the junta saw no need to delay its sham constitutional referendum. Postponing the vote only in the two areas hit hardest by the storm, the results obviated the need for those in the cyclone-ravaged regions to also cast ballots.
Nevertheless, the junta rescheduled the vote in those other areas. The junta has now made the extraordinary claim that 98.1 percent of the population had turned out to vote, with 92.48 percent endorsing the junta's proposal. According to the state-run New Light of Myanmar, this patently fraudulent outcome has "washed away" the 1990 election result.
It is deeply regrettable that both Ban Ki-moon and ASEAN chief Surin Pitsuwan declined to raise the fraudulent election result or Suu Kyi's expiring house arrest in their meetings with the junta, both of which occurred after Cyclone Nargis hit the country.
In so doing, they sent a clear signal to the junta that as long as they held their own people hostage, it could press ahead with their campaign to consolidate power and be assured the United Nations and ASEAN would relax any pressure for political reform. Their fundamental error was to focus exclusively on the suffering of the Burmese victims of Cyclone Nargis and to fail to recognize the political situation is equally unconscionable.
There is no doubt Indonesia has important experience to help explain to Myanmar's junta how a transition from military to civilian rule can be effectively managed. And even more relevant to current circumstances, of course, it did an exceptional job collaborating with the international community in responding to the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
As a result, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Indonesia have a key role to play, but time is running out for the exercise of leadership. While a lot more could be done, at a minimum, Indonesia should make clear to the Burmese junta that while ASEAN wants to help, this help will not include shielding Myanmar from further intervention should it persist in its callous disregard of its own people's welfare.
The writer is an attorney with Freedom Now in Washington, D.C., and represents Aung San Suu Kyi. He can be reached at jgenser@freedom-now.org
