China, Japan Resist Security Council Meet

Marwaan Macan-Markar 
June 7, 2006
Inter Press Service News Agency
Original Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33519


BANGKOK, Jun 7 (IPS) - Just when it appeared that international pressure was growing on Burma's military regime to loosen its oppressive hold on the country's people, there is some good news for Rangoon's junta from the realm of geo-politics. 

A growing political divide between major international actors has surfaced over calls to have Burma's rulers censured at the United Nations Security Council for their notorious human rights record and lack of commitment for political reform. 

In one camp are Western nations led by the United States, which have been championing the need for this unprecedented discussion of Burma at the council. This push was intensified following the junta's decision in late May to extend the continuing detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The Burmese Nobel Peace laureate has now spent over 10 of the past 17 years as a prisoner of the generals. 

On the opposing side are two major players from the East -- China and Japan. The East Asian powerhouses have received additional support from India, which announced last weekend that it would not push Burma towards political reform. ''Our basic principle is to live in peaceful coexistence and we do not believe in exporting ideologies,'' Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee told a two-day security conference in Singapore. 

Caught in between -- yet supportive of pressure on Rangoon to embrace more political and civil liberties -- are the countries that belong to the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-member grouping of which Burma is a member. 

The truth is no country can claim that human rights abuses are its own internal affairs. Such an excuse is difficult to accept, Hassan Wirayuda, foreign minister of ASEAN's largest member Indonesia, was quoted as having told reporters over the weekend. He was responding to a comment by his Burmese counterpart that described Suu Kyi's detention as a domestic issue. 

This is tragic and shameless for these countries to support such a despicable regime at such a time, Kraisak Choonhavan, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Thai Senate, told IPS. These countries are doing it to exploit Burma's natural resources. The Burmese people are victims again. 

Available reports and research done by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) mirror such a view, particularly China's long involvement in the Burmese economy, as opposed to the more recent forays being made by India. Beijing has had its eyes on Burmese wood products for years and India is showing interest in the country's abundant supply of natural gas. 

In 2005 for instance, China imported over 1.5 million cubic metres of Burmese timber worth nearly 350 million U.S. dollars, almost all of which was illegal, states London-based environmental lobby Global Witness in a note released last week. Over a third of Burma's imported goods and services come from China, according to the Asian Development Bank 

The debate over whether Burma's deteriorating human rights should be discussed at the Security Council has intensified after a visit to the country in mid-May by Ibrahim Gambari, U.N. under secretary-general for political affairs. The high point of that visit was a rare meeting that Gambari had with Suu Kyi, whose current period of house arrest began in May 2003. 

After the U.N. envoy, the first foreigner to meet the 60-year-old pro-democracy activist in two years, briefed the Council last Wednesday, Washington led the charge for a special resolution on Burma to be taken up by the 15-member body. The United States has already imposed economic sanctions on Burma. It would have meant the first time that the U.N.'s supreme body was confronting the junta on its notorious record. 

Yet Council members with veto powers, such as Russia and China, backed by Japan, have countered with arguments that have brought into relief an issue that has always dogged the Council -- what constitutes an international security threat? I don't consider the situation in Myanmar (Burma) as a situation that poses a threat to international peace and security, Kenzo Oshima, Japan's ambassador to the U.N., is quoted in the media as having told the Council. 

But regional rights activists are not convinced. This opposition to discussing Burma exposes how global security is defined by some. Human security cannot be divorced from the orthodox view of state and global security, said Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN network on Burma (ALTSEAN) in an interview. 

The Asian governments are giving a break to the military regime by taking this position, adds Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese political analyst in exile. Burma may not be Darfur or Rwanda but what is happening in the country is affecting its neighbours and can destabilise them. 

China and India -- Burma's neighbours on its eastern and western borders -- are not immune, nor are other neighbours, to disturbing trends spreading across Burma and, in some cases, spilling across its borders. The country has an escalating HIV/AIDS problem, with among the highest new cases reported in South-east Asia, a rapid rise of drug-resistant tuberculosis and the worst record of malaria-related deaths in Asia. 

Burma ranks as the world's second largest producer of opium after Afghanistan, and drug factories along its south-eastern borders have become production centres for methamphetamines that -- like the opium trade -- are shipped across its borders. And on Monday, the U.S. State Department named Burma as one of the countries where human trafficking is rampant. 

In addition, says Kraisak, are the consequences of Rangoon's hostile political agenda in the region. Continued attacks by the Burmese army on the country's ethnic minorities have driven over 500,000 people across the borders to Thailand, Bangladesh, India, and Malaysia to languish as refugees. That comes on top of the country having 540,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), the most in Asia, according to a Norwegian relief agency. 

There are many borderless issues that make Burma a threat to international security, says Stothard. Freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners will play a part in dealing with these mounting issues that the regime is refusing to address and that could destabilise the region.