The world has been horrified by graphic images in the media of the latest crackdown by Myanmar's military junta. But the bullets and clubs unleashed on Buddhist monks have worked. The monks have retreated, and an eerie normalcy has returned to Yangon.
That crackdown continues under cover of darkness. When the sun sets in Myanmar, fear rises. Everyone listens half awake for the dreaded knock on the door. Any night, the military's agents can come for you, take you away, and make sure you are never heard from again.
In recent nights, the junta's henchmen have burst into monasteries, lined up sleepy monks and smashed their shaved heads against the walls, spattering them with blood. Scores of others, perhaps hundreds, have been carted off for interrogation, torture or execution. The nighttime assault on a UN employee and her family made international news, but hundreds of less well connected Burmese have been similarly abused.
For 45 years, Myanmar's people have been subjected to the junta's reign of terror. My father was born in Rangoon (now Yangon) long before the 1962 coup that brought the current regime to power. Afterwards, many of my relatives, prosperous Indian merchants who had been settled in Myanmar for generations, abandoned homes and businesses to save their skins as chaos enveloped the city, which was later renamed Yangon.
A relative who now lives in Bangkok, but who returned part-time to Yangon in response to overtures from Myanmar's cash-starved rulers, recalled those days: "We lived through hell. We never knew when we woke up each morning what would happen. People were being denounced left and right. They could just come and take you away and take everything away from you."
Those who couldn't leave Myanmar, or didn't want to, have lived with this fear ever since.
The US and Europe have issued strong statements condemning the crackdown and calling upon Myanmar's neighbors, especially India and China, to exert their influence on the regime. The response from both has been muted (as it has from Thailand, which also has strong economic ties with Myanmar).
China balks at interfering in the "internal affairs" of a neighbor from whom it gets precious natural gas and potential access to the sea. India, which "normalized" bilateral relations a few years ago, is reluctant to alienate Myanmar's military, with which it has worked closely to counter rebels in India's northeast who had been using the common border to tactical advantage. To this end, India has provided aid, including tanks and training, to Myanmar's military.
But the main reason for India's good relations with Myanmar's ruling thugs is the country's vast and still largely unexploited energy reserves, which India desperately needs to fuel its economic boom. India has invested US$150 million in a gas exploration deal off the Arakan coast of Myanmar, and India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp and Gas Authority of India have taken a 30 percent stake in two offshore gas fields in direct competition with PetroChina, which has also been given a stake.
India and China are simply doing what the US and European countries have done for so long: trump rhetoric about democracy and human rights with policies that serve their strategic and energy security interests. US relations with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are two examples, and the US' Chevron and France's Total, two of the world's oil giants, continue to do a brisk business in Myanmar, thanks to loopholes in the sanctions.
But the rise of India and China means that the time-tested posture of Western democracies toward emerging states to "do as we say, not as we do" will become less tenable. If the EU and the US want democratic India to act according to its stated moral values and not its vital national interests when these appear to conflict, they had better be prepared to do the same.
Feeling the heat, including threats from some US senators to link the US' nuclear deal with India to its actions in Myanmar, India has announced that it is asking for the release of Burmese democratic opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. But the credibility of all democratic regimes, not just India's, is at stake in what unfolds in Myanmar.
Mira Kamdar is a fellow at the Asia Society.
Copyright: Project Syndicate/Asia Society
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry