Sunday Times 2
Does Lanka support Myanmar’s military Junta?
View(s):Myanmar, a nation of 55 million people, is continuing to be ravaged by violence following a coup by its military, and its elected leaders arrested over two years ago remain imprisoned.
Undaunted, Myanmar’s people are continuing their armed resistance with scant armaments. The air force of the junta is strafing indiscriminately even in poor isolated villages in which opposition resistance fighters have taken refuge. Over a million people are estimated to have been displaced and thousands killed. Myanmar civilians have joined the ethnic groups on the borders of the country — who have been resisting the central government of Myanmar since Independence in 1948— and all minorities in resisting the military junta.
By the end of February this year, 2,940 civilians had been killed by the authorities since the coup; 17,792 had been arrested and 13,630 remained detained according to the watchdog, Independent Association for Political Prisoners of Myanmar.
Last week, a Reuter report from Labuan Bajo in Indonesia said that at the ASEAN Summit (Myanmar is a member of ASEAN), leaders called for an immediate end to hostilities in military-ruled Myanmar and for urgent dialogue and humanitarian aid delivery, as fighting continued.
ASEAN, the report said, was expected to see wrangling over the crisis in Myanmar with patience because the junta demonstrates no intent to pursue a peace plan to which the Junta’s generals agreed with ASEAN two years ago when the crisis broke out.
The only seemingly punitive action taken by ASEAN has been to ban the Junta’s generals from high-level meetings until they promote the peace plan which includes ceasing hostilities, starting a dialogue and allowing full humanitarian assistance access.
However, the thick-skinned khaki-clad generals appear to consider ‘leaving the seat empty as a ‘comfort zone’ for they continue with their strategy of consolidating their power, the report said. The immediate objective is to hold an election with National League for Democracy leaders Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi now convicted by a kangaroo court to be jailed for their lifetime in the hope to win an election to the national state assembly which would inevitably be rigged, observers have said.
With armaments said to be supplied by Russia, the armed services, particularly its air force, can attack and massacre civilians and resistance fighters spread out in the vast countryside. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Myanmar’s Independence Day sent ‘Sincere greetings and anticipated further development of relations, the state-run newspaper Global New Light said.
China, whose foreign policy of non-interference in internal affairs has been applauded by many countries outside the Western bloc and shares a northern border with Myanmar is said to be a prime source of economic support for the nation under the jackboot of the military.
It now appears it will step up its relations with the military junta. Irrawaddy, an independent online newspaper of Myanmar last week reported the first visit of Foreign Minister of China Quin Gang to Napiyitaw, the junta’s capital. The Chinese Foreign Minister met junta’s boss Min Aung Hliang and former dictator Than Shwe.
The Irrawaddy reported that anti-Chinese protests broke out on May 10 across Myanmar. Protests were staged in Yangon, Salingi, and Letpadung among other places. An online campaign launched by students called for China to stop killing people in Myanmar by supporting ‘fascist criminals’, the report said.
The Irrawaddy report also said that according to some analysts, the flurry of high-profile visits by China to Myanmar followed soon after the US Congress passed the Burma Act which authorises funds and technical assistance to Myanmar’s anti-junta forces, including the ethnic armed organisations which have now teamed up with other opposition forces.
Whether such US assistance has come into this strife-torn country is not evident. Probably, the Biden administration does not want another complication in the already contentious relations between the two countries to come into play, analysts have said.
With no positive contributions coming from the West to resistance fighters opposing the junta and only strong UN Security Council resolutions calling on the military leaders to halt violence and work towards reconciliation in addition to strong statements of support by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Myanmar’s resistance fighters have been left destitute without foreign military assistance.
China’s policy of non-interference enables it to support absolute dictatorships while providing economic assistance without which these regimes would collapse. The countries now under authoritarian dictatorships with the blessings of China on its southern border are: Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos. It’s a blot on China’s foreign policy considering its success in the Middle East — the Iran-Saudi rapport—a breakthrough in South America by forging links to Brazil and success in many African countries. The only exception is Thailand among its Southern neighbours which is pro-Western in foreign policy but dares not antagonise the emerging superpower on its northern border by assisting the rebels in neighbouring Myanmar.
Sri Lanka had strong Buddhist links with Myanmar — earlier known as Burma — the land of the Pagodas. Since Gen Ne Win seized power in 1962 and his regime was followed by successive military dictatorships to date, relations between the two countries had waned.
But under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former Lt. Colonel in the Sri Lankan army, relations with the Myanmar Junta picked up and appears to be building up after him. A state-controlled newspaper in Sri Lanka on May 5 headlined a story where Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena felicitated leading Buddhist monks ‘who were honoured by the Republic of Myanmar’ at a ceremony held at Temple Trees on May 03. The ceremony was attended by ministers, parliamentarians, government officials and Myanmar’s Ambassador U Han, the report said.
While strengthening relations between the Buddhist clergy of Myanmar and Lanka is welcome, should the Sri Lanka government patronise events sponsored by the military junta which is killing people of Myanmar (70 percent Buddhist), has been keeping the country under its military jackboot for over two years and throwing democratically elected leaders behind bars to last a lifetime? Sri Lanka has been a democracy for 78 years and its people voting with their feet threw out a government of a former military officer moving towards authoritarianism only last year. We still go under the description of a Democratic Republic.
Do the people of Lanka approve the conduct of the Myanmar military junta? Should our Foreign Policy be a projection of the sovereign will of the people?
(The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader. He can be contacted at gamma.weerakoon@gmail.com)