Business as usual with the Burmese generals

Elliot Wilson explains why international condemnation of Burma’s brutal military leaders is so ineffectual: because many other countries are eager to do deals with them

The satirist P.J. O’Rourke once noted that the more references to democracy a country has in its official title, the greater the chance it is run by a grubby totalitarian regime. Hence the People’s Republic of China and the Kim dynasty’s heroically misleading ‘Democratic People’s Republic’ of North Korea.

Burma — or Myanmar, as its leaders prefer — has its equivalent in the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). This is essentially a rebadged version of the less fluffy-sounding State Law and Order Restoration Council, a name that was dropped in 1997 perhaps due to its unappealingly Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque acronym: SLORC. For Burma’s brutal military junta, which has ruled with mediaeval barbarism since 1988, the ‘Peace’ portion of the title signals the army’s self-proclaimed right to maintain internal stability by keeping a malnourished populace crushed underfoot and holding the revered opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under indefinite house arrest.

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Even when Cyclone Nargis tore through the country’s southern delta in early May — causing damage estimated at £5 billion and leaving as many as 200,000 dead — the junta closed the door on foreign aid, apparently preferring to see Burmese people die. The Economist Intelligence Unit called it Burma’s ‘worst-ever natural disaster’, with up to 2.5 million people displaced and most of them still lacking adequate food, shelter or drinking water. That brings us to the ‘Development’ aspect of the SPDC: Burma could get away with rejecting offers of assistance from, among others, the British, French, Americans and Chinese, largely because so many countries, including potential donors, are morally compromised in their dealings with these tinpot dictators.