Maureen Aung-Thwin, has the revolution failed, in your opinion?
Absolutely not, this is only the beginning, the real beginning.
Why do you think so? Are you optimistic?
I am always optimistic, in this kind of work. I am optimistic because the trend of history is not towards more repressive dictatorships. It is impossible to totally isolate a whole population from the rest of the world in the 21st century. Except North Korea maybe, which does a pretty good job of being isolated. But even North Korea is starting to realize that it needs the outside world. Of course they need it for electricity, for food and whatever. But the Burmese were not ever closed like North Korea, they were open, and they have always been so. After World War II, they were supposed to have been one of the first tiger economies. We were the number one country poised to be a champion in South-East Asia. We had the best universities. People came to Rangoon to go to university from all over the region. Because of that past, and even with 45 years of military rule, the people have not been totally isolated. And the Burmese personality is different. And even though I know they have not risen up and marched in the streets in the last twenty years,it’s OK. This is the first major time they have come out. It was important that it was the monks who came out to lead the demostrations.
Can the military junta start itself democratic reforms, or we can only hope for something new from the opposition?
Right now the opposition is under great stress. I mean, they are put being down right now. Burma today is as most repressive as it has ever been. They basically shut down all the cities every night, and the authorities roam the streets and go and arrest people. It is almost like Nazi Germany or something similar. So it is the worst it has ever been. That is also why the opposition has no chance now. Of course, if they came to power, or even if they came to share power, they would be introducing democratic reforms. I think that some younger officers in the junta actually are more aware of the need to change. But nobody dares move against general Than Shwe, since everyone is scared to move against him right now, even though there are people in the regime who are outraged at the abuse of the monks, because almost everyone in Burma is Buddhist, as you may know, you go straight to hell for such actions.
So you are optimistic not about the next months but next years?
Yes, I think probably it won’t be a mater of months. Everything depends on the world and the international community, but especially those forums where the Burmese military regime actually is sort of taken seriously, that is the United Nations and Asean, that’s where they feel the more pressure.
What can you tell us about the regime, the junta? What kind of regime it is? What do they think, what do they do?
It is a very opaque regime. That is, a regime that most people in the world have no clue about who they are, what their families are, so we do not even know their names, we only know the name of the top guys. In this case the top guy is the one who is the most important, but the regime is not like one person really, or three people or five, it is like, I think, 20 or 28…there are really a lot of officers who are part of the regime, even though most have no power, or little power. So they pretend that they rule in a collective, which makes it harder to rebel against, because the people under the top get the most benefits right now. Burma now is making about US 2.6 billion dollars a year from natural oil and gas, and it is a lot of money. And at the same time, they felt the need to raise the petrol prices overnight, because they do not know how to manage the economy. So it is a very, very rich country, with many people on starvation, or just at subsistence level.
I have read a recent article on Foreign Affairs describing Burma as a serious threat to the security of its neighbours. It talked about Hiv and probably also…
…drugs, trafficking, refugees. But infectious diseases is probably one of the most dangerous perils going out from the country. The drug problem is also really big, and it adds to the Hi-Aids problem. But there is also a lot of human trafficking, and there are methanphetamines, so the drug is not just heroin, but also, you know, the little pills. That is a big problem for Thailand, they have more meth addicts than they have ever had, and it is all coming out of Burma. The military have made a deal with some of those ethnic drug-lords who produce the drugs.
Why has not this uprising happened before?
Well, when you rule a country by fear, if you have to spend most of your time surviving, you really are not going to think: “Oh, I did not get to vote”, or “Oh, I do not get to choose my own Parliament”. The 1988 generation, those students who let the ’88 uprising, were recently let out of prison, after many years, and when they were out they started demonstrating about economic themes, slowly, slowly. The regime allowed them to protest quietly like that. There were not huge crowds of people marching, but they got a lot attention. They even gathered 500 thousand signatures to send to the United Nations Secretary General. They did these things, and to me that is a less violent and a little safer form of protest. And then as soon as the monks joined them, they put everybody in prison, they now caught almost all the ’88 leaders. And they are torturing them. I am deeply worried that some of them will not come out alive.
Is the opposition united and does it have a political program?
The opposition is united, at least they are united against the military regime being still in power. They are united on many spheres, because the opposition includes the elected MPs, or people from the 1990 elections, the ethnic leaders from both the cease-fire groups and some who are still in armed conflict. There is opposition outside of the country, there are many people in the opposition who are sort of apolitical for now, but they all agree on some basic things, that they do not want a military regime any longer. But they cannot do anything about it right now.
Can the international sanctions work?
Yes, I think not only can they work, but it has to be kept in place because it is the biggest leverage that we have. Some people say unless all the countries in the world sanction Burma, it won’t work. But it depends on who is sanctioning Burma. There are people saying “Oh, America is just one country”. But America has the only real sanctions against Burma. America’s a very important market for developing countires, it is a very important player. There are countries who do not want to anger America and therefore might join in some of the policies. So America plays a larger role than, say, Tahiti.
What does all the situation teach us about China?
The situation teaches us that China should be watched very carefully, and we should question its tactics in its supposedly” neutral” stance it purportedly takes. They say “We do not interfere in private countries’ affairs”, while at the same time in Africa they have done so, and in Burma they also doing the same thing–they basically are buying all the natural resources, and they have made the repressive regime depend on their money. So we have learned that it is a very, very powerful country. If China can give a country grants of millions of dollars, why should a regime, or a dictatorship go to the World Bank, which has conditions on the money? That is one thing we have learned about China. It is tremendously powerful. The other thing we learned is, because they are an upcoming a superpower, they are also very concerned about their international image. We have the wonderful Olympics coming up next August. The Chinese are very conscious of this and very concerned that their début on the international stage might be ruined by a whole range of bad PR issues like demonstrations, and Burma will be one of the problems they will be concerned about. The Chinese are opening their Olympics on the exact day of the Burmese uprising twenty years ago, August, 8, 2008.
Can six-party talks be useful as in the case of North Korea?
Of course, I think it could be useful, because if China could pull that off, and they were a very big player in that, China at least should try to do something similar in Burma. North Korea is an automatic ally of China, but I think Burma is an informal ally–it is definitely a client-state of China, and where China has a lot of influence. China now has an incentive, because if it can help Burma to start transforming, it can have a very trouble-free Olympics..
Can Europe play a role?
Europe can play a big role. Burma is part of the ASEAN. Basically since it joined ASEAN in 1997, it has kept the whole regional group, which rules by consensus, like a hostage, because every single meeting, including the meeting with the major trade partners in the European Union, the agenda is always overshadowed by what to do with Burma. Certain countries in Europe won’t come to a meeting if Burma’s there or they won’t invite all of the ASEAN countries if Burma insists on coming So it is like a big stone around everybody’s neck. So the more strong and united Europeans are – by the way they are a lot more strong than they were before the uprising, suddenly they seem to have taken more notice, putting more targeted sanctions on Burma. But the European Union sanctions before are quite weak, it was not really anything, but now it is the first time you see Germany, France (especially France, by the way), talking about sanctions. Sarkozy even talked about Total being pulled out of Burma, that thought lasted less than a day. At least they have become much more vocal about it.