To my mind, there are certainly many effective ways of bringing ‘closed states’ on the international agenda. I am also convinced that endeavors involved in highlighting the problems of a particular country before the international community will be dependent on the conditions prevailing in that country. So, I would confine myself to focus on what we have done so far to bring Burma on to the world stage.
Burma has been a closed state since the military coup in 1962. The leaders of that military coup, who later discarded their uniforms to rule the country as civilians under the name of the ‘Burma Socialist Program Party’, were a xenophobic bunch. Most of these leading ex-military officers, who introduced what they designated as ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’, rose from the ranks and were involved in the struggle for independence of Burma and their tendency to mistrust foreigners may have originated from that background.
The incumbent ruling generals, just like their predecessors measure the success of their leadership on the extent of political control that they exercise rather than in the economic performance of the nation. Hence, they pursue with a single-minded zeal self-sufficiency, autarky, cultural purity, nationalism, anti-colonialism, which all have political origins, regardless of economic costs. In doing so, the generals regularly recall times when Burma was ‘enslaved’ by ‘British imperialism’ and ‘Japanese fascism’ and they accuse foreigners of having ‘ulterior motives’. For the generals, these ‘reasons’ are justifications to keep the country isolated and they do it by introducing restrictive laws and orders.
For instance, laws first introduced by the Burma Socialist Program Party in the 1970s deprive foreigners and descendants of equal opportunities, regardless of the fact that many of them have lived in Burma for decades, and orders which overtly, and some subtly, prevent or discourage ‘alien cultures’ from entering the Burmese society, and these laws continue to prevail up to now.
The fear of ‘foreign influence’ by the military regimes in Burma is actually linked to their intrinsic insecurity. Since the regimes understand that without open exchange of ideas, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and so forth, their control over the people will never be threatened, they look at ‘democracy’, ‘civic society’, and ‘civil liberties’, ‘human rights’ as ‘alien origin’ that directly threaten their rule.
This warped conception naturally leads to criminalization of citizens who try to practice their basic human rights and fundamental freedoms, and Burma as a consequence becomes a closed state where suppression and serious violation of fundamental rights are blatantly practiced.
As representatives elected by the people in the 1990 elections — where I want to emphasize the fact that these were organized by the Burmese generals but who later refused to recognize the results as the pro-democracy parties had won hands down – – it became incumbent upon us to inform the world about what is truly going on in the country. That is our first step in bringing Burma on the international agenda.
We decided it was imperative to leave Burma at the end of 1990 after the military started cracking down on election winning parties, and thanks to many advisors and well-wishers, we were able to come up with a plan to formally place Burma on the UN agenda.
To do so, we knew we needed to tackle issues which are non-political and not affecting internationally sensitive matters in order to ensure that other countries did not resist our efforts. I firmly believe that it is important, particularly in the initial phases to advocate for non-controversial issues when a movement like ours needs to make more friends than enemies. Accordingly based on advice from friends who empathize with our movement, we chose human rights as our first issue in countering the military regime.
With the help and contribution of friends, church groups, and NGOs, we were able to visit many countries to speak at international forums and conferences to explain about human rights violations in Burma. At the same time we were able to form a professional team to compile, document, publish, and distribute our annual ‘Yearbooks’ on human rights to universities, libraries, governments, and NGOs, and more importantly to the UN Special Rapporteurs and the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR).
We submitted our human rights reports without fail to the UNCHR annual conferences and every year our delegations visited Geneva to testify at those conferences and speak to foreign missions about the human rights problems in Burma.
As a breakthrough, the situation of human rights in Burma was firstly considered under confidential procedure in 1990 and later, in 1992, it was moved to the public forum for discussion. That opened the door for us to place Burma within the UN mechanism. The UNCHR had passed a resolution and appointed a Special Rapporteur with the mandate to investigate the situation of human rights in Burma and report back to the UNCHR as well as the UN General Assembly. The UN General Assembly incorporated Burma issue in its resolution in 1991. These UN resolutions were passed by consensus at both the UN forums.
Once we were able to highlight the ongoing human rights abuses in Burma, we began to gradually incorporate political issues in the UN resolutions, including the fact that the military regime was refusing to honor the election results, to talk with the election-winning parties and the ethnic nationality forces.
All these could never have been achieved without the support of democratic and sympathetic countries which are authors and sponsors of the resolutions. To win their sympathy, our delegations regularly called on 30 to 50 UN missions every year and toured world nations to inform the governments of the real situation.
As UN General Assembly resolutions get stronger every year, thanks to the reports of UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights in Burma, we could get the support of the UN General Assembly in 1994 to mandate the Secretary-General into helping resolve the political stalemate in our country.
The success in getting the Office of the UN Secretary-General involved in facilitating a political settlement in Burma was a major step. The UN Secretary-General eventually appointed a Special Envoy to explore the problems and help resolve them.
The Burmese generals, instead of cooperating with the international community or the United Nations, reacted in a negative way. They refused to let either the UN Special Envoy or the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights enter the country, stepped up political suppression, and committed violent crimes to crack down on the democracy movement.
The UN Special Envoy resigned and as conditions in Burma further aggravated, the UN Secretary-General was asked to brief the UN Security Council about the situation in the country. Today, Burma is already on the official agenda of the UN Security Council which has decided to discuss ‘the situation in Myanmar’ at its meetings.
What we are currently seeking at the UN Security Council level is a non-punitive but binding resolution that outlines Burma’s peaceful transition to democracy accompanied by minimum parameters that the Burmese generals need to fulfill. We are also hoping the UN Security Council will define the role the international community can play to assist the process of democratic transition and provide mandate to the UN Secretary-General to mediate a dialogue of all stakeholders in Burma.
The efforts of our democracy movement to bring a closed state like Burma on the international agenda also involve the International Labor Organization. A free trade union — the Federation of Trade Unions – Burma — has been filing complaints at the ILO annual conferences against the Burmese generals for wittingly using forced labor for state and military projects, including forcing people to walk in front as ‘human minesweepers’ while carrying military supplies in frontline areas.
The ILO has taken action, including the opening of an ILO Office in Rangoon, to monitor forced labor practices.
As many elected representatives have come out of Burma to work with the democracy movement outside the country, we have for many years been working with friends from many parliaments to form parliamentary caucuses for democracy in Burma. We have also bonded with political parties and political institutions, like the Liberal International, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and so forth, as well as human rights organizations to keep the world informed of the ongoing abuses by the Burmese military.
In sum, I have to say that despite being a ‘closed state’ Burma’s case became well known internationally because of several factors:
We have:
To conclude, I would like to call on this conference to pass a resolution on Burma which expresses support for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution to help resolve the problems in Burma.
Thank you.
Since the regimes understand that without open exchange of ideas, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and so forth, their control over the people will never be threatened, they look at 'democracy', 'civic society', 'civil liberties', and 'human rights' as of 'alien origin' that directly threaten their rule.
Dr Sein Win – Marrakech, November 2006
Burma
