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December 2007 Edition

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Civil Society News
New Delhi

THE dust over September’s Burma protests seems to have settled. Those peaceful monks, activists, citizens demonstrating for a democratic Burma have gone home to wait and watch till the military junta begins its next crackdown, you think. Ask the Burma Solidarity Group which heads the campaign. For them its business as usual as they trudge from college to college lugging banners and posters and lobbying to garner public opinion. They would like citizens to change the Indian government’s neutral policy on Burma. The Burmese delegation is warmly greeted in academia. In JNU, the seminar room is crowded with teachers and students. Dr Tint Swe and Soe Myint make presentations. While Dr Swe is a minister in the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), Soe Myint is editor of Mizzima, a monthly journal on the Burmese democracy movement which you can read on the internet.

There is sympathy. But how can we help, the Burmese are asked? India can’t intervene. There is China. Wouldn’t Asean be a better bet, inquired one sympathetic professor dipping her biscuit in tea? Some academics, known for their Left leanings, are squeamish about the loud support the Burmese are getting from the West. Dr Tint Swe and Soe Myint seem well armed to deal with such questions. And Dr Swe’s request for help is disarmingly modest. “We would like the Indian government to give scholarships to Burmese students for a range of subjects: political science, management, information technology. India should help build Burma’s human resources,” he says. “We also want India to host an international convention on Burma attended by all stakeholders to find a way out. We don’t have democratic institutions.

We want India to help us build them. Instead, your former President APJ Abul Kalam Azad, on a state visit to Burma, offered democracy training to the military junta,” he says impassively. It seems the Burmese diaspora wants to equip itself so that it can take over from the military junta whenever the time is ripe. It doesn’t want to gain power and then start finding its feet. It doesn’t want Burma to be another failed state. Dr Swe says the Burmese diaspora can play an active democratic role and it is worthwhile to invest in it. “We are looking for friends in need,” he says. The Burmese have managed to get solid support from India’s northeast. In Mizoram, political parties and students held a rally. Protests in Delhi were well attended. The UN has stepped in and the military junta has opened talks with the iconic Aung San Su Kyi, who has been under house arrest for years.

Dr Swe says his government in exile has been talking to ethnic minorities in Burma. “Over the last 19 years political understanding between us has grown. There are differences but broadly there is agreement to build a federal union in Burma based on democracy and not to let our country disintegrate.” The military junta is in total control, but then change happens in stages. Soe Myint says there are marked differences between Burma’s 1988 uprising and the present one. At that time there was no media around. But this time the whole world saw peaceful monks, who led the movement for democracy, being beaten and killed and the military junta hadnowhere to hide. In 1988, students demanded a change of regime. In the recent uprising, peaceful monks were chanting and asking for national reconciliation and dialogue. In 1988, to defuse the situation the junta called for elections. But when Su Kyi’s party,the National League for Democracy (NLD) won, the junta refused to hand over or share power. Dr Swe, who won on an NLD ticket, had to flee to India. “Now faced with international pressure the junta has started to talk with Su Kyi. But they do not want to share power,” says Soe Myint.

So anger continues to simmer. The junta’s crackdown has once again forced the movement for democracy to go underground and onto the internet. Civil society groups are growing slowly. There are students forming networks, women leading protests, monasteries pitted against the military. Burmese society is split down the middle. Will the movement for democracy in Burma be like the Free Tibet movement ---alive abroad, but suffocated and dying at home?

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