Financial Times
Published: 20 April 2011
From Mr Derek Tonkin.
Sir,
In your editorial “Burmese tactics” (April 18) you say that “it is still too early for the west to relax sanctions” against the Burmese regime. William Hague, the British foreign secretary, stated on April 12 that “renewing tough but targeted sanctions is the right decision at the right time”. But there are few who would agree with him that the sanctions applied are more than a “modest inconvenience”, to quote Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state.
The European Union has declared regime assets frozen, only to find that there are none to freeze. We have issued visa bans, so that some Burmese wives now have to be content with shopping in Bangkok, Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong. We have denied financial facilities to regime companies that never sought them in the first place. By any standard, these “sanctions” do not amount to a row of beans. How can we pretend they are “tough”?
The debate though has moved on. There are now a range of non-statutory measures, policy decisions and recommendations in place which we pretend are not sanctions at all. We deny Burma support from international financial institutions because the funding would need to be handled at a government level. We restrict the mandates of United Nations agencies to support through non-governmental channels only. Western development assistance works out annually at about $6 per head compared with $62 in neighbouring Laos. At the time of the devastating Cyclone Nargis in 2008 the aid provided to survivors was less than 5 per cent of that awarded to victims of the 2004 tsunami, although the devastation and casualties were roughly comparable. Britain, in particular discourages all trade, investment and tourism.
We need, as Aung San Suu Kyi and Mr Hague are seeking, an independent expert view of all these measures to determine their political and economic impact. Despite more than 20 years of sanctions, this has not yet happened.
As a result, the debate on sanctions is conducted in a welter of emotion and misinformation that fails altogether to take into account the true interests of the Burmese people. How much longer do we have to wait for such an inquiry to be undertaken?
Derek Tonkin,
Chairman Network Myanmar,
Worplesdon, Surrey, UK
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/649970a4-6ad2-11e0-9744-00144feab49a.html#axzz1K2mi13zR
1 comment:
Dear Friends,
Two interesting items - one in English, a letter to the Editor at the Financial Times and the other in Burmese (no less interesting), comparing the 12-objectives of the State, before and after the "parliament" has come into existence in Naypyidaw.
Take one objection for instance: to ensure that citizens act and live with high ethical standards.
Put your two fingers in your mouth and rush to the nearest clean toilet - to puke.
In the latest Transparency International's corruption index, we are #2 from the bottom, only beaten by the pirate-run Somalia! What is the difference between Than Shwe Inc and Somalian pirates?
THEIR UNIFORMS. (You know that this is unadulterated truth/facts - whatever our disagreements may be).
The scale, emerging culture and the pervasiveness of corruption in Burma would make the much-trashed Indian state's corruption look like a model of a clean state.
Both the Myanmar State's objectives and the strategically planned act of pushing for "expert" review on sanctions would be called searching ticks in monkey's public hair.
Network Myanmar Chairman must have worn a pair of Japanese Fascist-era sunglasses when he raised the issue of Burmese receiving $6 per head as opposed to $60 per head for the Laosian people.
(The occupation army of Fascists in Burma during WWII wrapped green-papers around cows' eyes to make sure they ate hay so that they could be fit for excessive work for the Japanese army.)
For the Burmese junta has been awash in cash from their acts of prostituting the country's immovable land and rivers, as well as other natural resources to the highest bidders (The project to build Magui-Tavoy Special Economic Zone over 100 square miles with a deep seaport, petrochemical processing industry - which Thailand's Eaton-Oxford-educated Prime Minister Abbisit said is unfit for Thai soil and Thai people, but obviously fit for the Burmese soil and the Burmese -- alone is one of the world's largest construction deal - $15 billion - and is going to go up. And no one knows where the money is going, who is deciding what to do with that amount of money).
And yet whores and pimps for global aid and development industry are out en mass talking about the Burmese people who are not getting nowhere near the Laotians and the Cambodians, etc. while keeping their mouths shut about the regime squandering massive amount of public funds.
. The Chairman also found it inconvenient to mention that the junta has allocated less than 3-4 percent of the national budget on health and education sector each for the year 2011-2012. That doesn't even include the extra-parliamentary fund which only Commander in chief of the Armed Forces will have access to and know how much.
Lastly, since when foreign diplomats, serving or retired, deem the welfare of other people - as opposed to their governments' strategic priorities - their main and passionate concern? Talk of Burmese people's interests - whenever I hear from the mouth of any diplomats - make me want to puke.
The last time I check diplomats - any diplomat, east or west - are there in their foreign outposts to serve their countries' national interests, as defined by the rich, the powerful and the connected - in other words, the ruling class.
Pubic hair is hair in the frontal genital area, the crotch, and sometimes at the top of the inside of the legs; these areas form the pubic region. .
Ticks
. A tick is a small, blood-sucking mite. Normally it lives on blood from larger animals, like deer, but it may also attach itself to humans.
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