RSS

Contact us

Saturday 22 November 2008

The sweet contagion of freedom

The sweet contagion of freedom will outlast the bloodshed in Burma

Burma is awakening from a nightmare of greed and repression. 

Fergal Keane meets a family on the Thai-Burma border whose tragic story is Burma's story but remains optimistic about the chances of the Burmese desire for freedom ultimately triumphing over the junta. 

The military’s main foreign backer is the government of the People’s Republic of China. The shrewd heads in Beijing have been worried about their clients in Rangoon for some time. Chinese foreign policy is not, as some assume, entirely based on satisfying short-term economic interests or about avoiding controversy ahead of the Olympic Games. The Chinese take a long view of politics and when they look at Burma they see trouble. Not just trouble for the Generals but for China itself. Burma is an important investment zone and a source of energy for the booming Chinese economy. Beijing doesn’t want business disrupted by embarrassing international arguments about the human rights record of its client. Nor does it want to see the unfortunate example of an unelected government being swept from power by a popular uprising. Heaven knows what hopes that might spur in China. So my sense is that while China will stand by the Generals in public, it will privately press them hard to open some kind of dialogue with the opposition.

The strange thing is that the opposition’s most respected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is committed to dialogue with the military. She has eschewed any form of violent protest and spoken repeatedly of her respect for the army as an essential institution in Burmese life. I know this not only from reading her words but from several conversations we had when she was briefly released from house arrest.

I remember her taking me on a tour of the lakeside villa where the regime has kept her imprisoned. It was an austere place and among her few diversions were prayer, reading and listening to the BBC World Service. At the time I had just come from living in South Africa and she told me that she had followed my dispatches on the transition to majority rule.

Aung San Suu Kyi questioned me in detail about Mandela and the peaceful accommodation he had reached with the white security establishment. I did warn her that although the South African security forces had indeed been brutal they had been subject to political direction, were regularly investigated by a free press and subject to judicial oversight. None of these conditions was present in Burma.

More articles from: Fergal Keane | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved