Burma: a rough road ahead
Recent events in Burma have shown that the path to full democracy and acceptance by the international community will be a tough one to follow. Change may be afoot, but some things in Burma are likely to get worse before they get better.
The Burmese government’s schizophrenic reaction to popular protests is symptomatic of an emerging democracy to which a measured response has, until recently, been an anathema.
In late November Burmese police used water cannon and tear gas to break up a protest against the expansion of Burma’s largest copper mine.
Protesters said dozens were injured and their camps set alight in the town of Monywa, in Burma’s north-west Sagaing region.
The protesters, mostly farmers but also including monks and activists, are objecting to what they claim are forced evictions to allow for the expansion of the mine. The farmers started their protest in June, saying they were forced to accept a deal two years ago, when the military junta was still in control, under which they gave up their land in return for new housing and financial compensation. The mine’s billion-dollar expansion project covers several thousand hectares of land.
The mine, owned by the Burmese military, has backing from Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco (through its subsidiary Wanbao Mining). The company said that the deal was voluntary, and that only a small minority of farmers rejected it.
According to witnesses who spoke to Reuters, squads of riot police arrived at the camps early in the morning. “They shot some sort of canisters that caused fire at the camp. We just don’t know what sort of weapon it was,” said Shin Oattama, a Buddhist monk.
The majority of the injured protesters are monks who mostly appear to be suffering from burns, according to BBC foreign correspondents.
President Thein Sein’s office said in a statement that police had used water cannon, tear gas and smoke bombs to disperse the crowds.
A spokesman for the government denied that chemical weapons were used. According to some strict definitions that may well be true, but readers with military experience will add together the terms ‘smoke bomb’ and ‘burns’ and get ‘white phosphorous’.
A confused response
Only a few days before the police sent in the riot squads, guards at the mine had found themselves in a conundrum: should they keep people out using heavy-handed tactics like they would have done only a couple of years ago, or should they let people in to join peaceful protests? A group of nuns approached the mine, and the guards reacted by half-heartedly forming a human wall, then giving up and letting the nuns in. They were unsure what to do, and plainly had not been given any clear instructions; they decided to err on the side of non-violence. And yet, less than a week later, water cannon and tear gas were the order of the day.
Laws on public protests in Burma have been relaxed amid a series of democratic reforms. But the government gave the protesters an ultimatum to leave the site.
The difficulty the new Burmese parliament faces is that it has no experience of dealing with protests and popular unrest with anything other than an iron-fist. The Burmese parliament is beginning to assert itself, and there will surely be aspiring politicians there who will see backing the farmers’ grievances against a Chinese- and military-backed mine as a vote-winner. There are others, however, who will see greater benefit in ensuring Burma maintains its strong ties with China.
Even among those in Burma who absolutely support democratisation, there are differences in opinion about whether to move closer to the West, and its strongest allies in the region such as India, or whether to keep itself closely linked to what it sees as the rising star of China.
Those who want to cling to China, which in the short term at least can be considered ‘following the money’, are likely to take a harder line on protesters than their colleagues who prefer to foster popular support (this being a conundrum to which, arguably, no nation has yet found an answer that satisfies all parties).
Growing in confidence
It is not just the police and security forces that are unsure of how protests should play out in new, democratic Burma. Under the junta, those who chose to protest knew exactly what the government response would be; they knew what they could do, and exactly where the line was that they had to beware of crossing.
Now, the rules have changed and they do not know what they are. The only way they are going to find out is by testing the limits of what the government is prepared to put up with.
Inevitably, the lack of certainty on both sides means that some protests are going to meet with a violent response. It is also likely that there will be a lot more grievances raised about deals done under the old regime that have left a large number of people feeling hard-done by.
The Monywa Mine situation is being seen, particularly by external commentators, as a test case for how Burma’s new government will handle growing protests around the country over land grabs that took place under military rule.
China’s state-run newspaper Global Times said in an editorial that halting the project would be a “lose-lose situation” for both countries. “Only third parties, including some Western forces, will be glad to see this result,” it said.
However, this misses the point somewhat. Various groups inside Burma will, no doubt, welcome comments from foreign powers when they support their position. But this support is, frankly, academic. Burmese society is undergoing change that is being driven from within, and this is where the new balance of protest and government response will be struck. Eventually a new equilibrium will be established, but there will be tears before bedtime.