Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights | Analysis

BURMA: Freedom for Suu Kyi Haunts Junta

Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 11 2007 (IPS) - One date, May 27, has come to haunt Burma&#39s military rulers. It marks the occasion when the junta customarily extends the current detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

This year the chorus of voices calling for her freedom will include a new list of heavyweights on the global political stage. Former presidents and prime ministers from the developing and developed world figure on this list, according to information received by IPS.

No less than 14 United Nations officials set the tone this week for a fresh international campaign by releasing a signed statement in Geneva calling on the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known, to free the Nobel peace laureate from house arrest. They included Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the U.N. human rights envoy for Burma, Hina Jilani, the U.N. secretary-general&#39s envoy to protect human rights defenders, and Ambey Ligabo, the U.N. envoy for the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

‘&#39The U.N. human rights experts believe that the stability of Myanmar is not well served by the arrest and detention of several leaders,&#39&#39 declared the statement, referring to the name by which the junta now calls Burma. ‘&#39(Suu Kyi&#39s) tireless commitment to non-violence, truth, and human rights has made her a worthy symbol through whom the plight of all people of (Burma) may be recognised.&#39&#39

The 61-year-old Suu Kyi has spent over 11 of the last 19 years as a prisoner of the junta; the current phase beginning end of May 2003, after she and her political supporters were attacked by goons linked to the SPDC and then arrested.

Yet, Burma watchers have no reason to feel sanguine that the military regime will depart from its policy of shutting Suu Kyi from public view despite the international pressure. ‘&#39The military is not showing any signs that she will be released this month,&#39&#39 Aung Naing Oo, a Burma political analyst exiled in Thailand, said in an interview. ‘&#39They are keeping her in detention because of what she can do and what she represents.&#39&#39

There is another reason why the regime may be reluctant: her name is associated with May 27 of another year, 1990, a date awash with symbolism for Burma&#39s pro-democracy movement. It was on that day 17 years ago that Suu Kyi led her opposition party, the National League For Democracy (NLD), to a thumping victory at the first parliamentary elections in over 28 years. Her party secured 81 percent of the 485-member Constituent Assembly, while the pro-junta National Unity Party won a paltry two percent of the seats.

But the junta – which had crushed a pro-democracy uprising on the streets of Rangoon in 1988, killing thousands of students in a hail of gunfire – refused to recognise the results. Newly-elected parliamentarians, NLD sympathisers and student activists were arrested and thrown into the capital&#39s notorious Insien prison. Suu Kyi was also kept captive, marking her first phase as a political prisoner.

‘&#39The regime has stymied itself by giving added meaning to May 27 through Suu Kyi&#39s detention,&#39&#39 says Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN), a regional human rights lobby. ‘&#39It is loaded with symbolism. Releasing her on that day will be seen as a two-fold triumph over the regime.&#39&#39

To that one can add how increasingly vulnerable the SPDC has become over the last year, Stothard explained in an interview. ‘&#39The morale is getting low because of problems within the army.&#39&#39

A hint of disenchantment within sections of the military was confirmed in a report released in early April by ‘Jane&#39s Defence Weekly,&#39 the respected publication that monitors armament trends across the world. During the four-month period preceding a September 2006 meeting of top military officers, 9,497 troops were dismissed from service, states the study, ‘Myanmar army document spotlights low morale&#39. That was an eight percent increase in desertion rates over the same period in 2005, when 8,760 Burmese troops left the service.

In some areas, battalions had less than 20 percent of their numerical strength, while some military units during the same period, prior to September 2006, could only count on about 15 soldiers, which was less than two percent of the expected numbers, adds the report.

In February this year, further signs of cracks within the ranks emerged, when the junta forced 800 low and mid-ranking officers to retire, bringing to1,350 the number of mid-level officers forced to quit since 2007 began.

Burma&#39s politics has been dominated by the military since a 1962 coup, with the ruling generals refusing to share power with a civilian political leadership. The military has maintained its grip through its numbers, currently estimated to be over 400,000-strong. Close to 20 percent of this south-east Asian nation&#39s gross domestic product, or 2.8 billion US dollars, goes for military expenses. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute ranks Burma among the leading 15 military spenders in the world.

The spiralling cost of living, a mismanaged economy, spreading public disenchantment in Rangoon and growing international condemnation, including Burma being placed for the first time at the U.N. Security Council this year, have also added to the regime&#39s discomfort since May, 2006.

It is a milieu that has forced Gen. Than Shwe, Burma&#39s strongman, to be more vigilant. ‘&#39Releasing Aung San Suu Kyi now will only expose the generals to problems that were not there last year,&#39&#39 Win Min, a Burma researcher at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand, told IPS. ‘&#39They will drag this on. They have no exit plan.&#39&#39