Talking About a Resolution
News: After nearly 50 years of human rights abuses the United Nations is poised to come down on Burma's oppressive regime, if only China will cooperate.
August 18, 2006
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For two years the United Nations special envoy to Burma tried to get into the country, to no avail. This January he resigned, and the UN has said it’s considering leaving the post vacant altogether. Nowhere is human rights work easy. But in Burma, where researchers are prohibited access, dissidents are driven into exile, and China casts its long protective shadow over the ruling military junta, progress seems all but impossible.
But the UN, rather than giving up, is changing its tactics, and pro-democracy activists are cautiously optimistic. Despite 28 UN resolutions that have failed to bring change in Burma, now "is a very exciting time, says Jeremy Woodrum of the US Campaign for Burma. "There’s a possibility of a breakthrough."
In May, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, was allowed to enter Burma and met separately with General Than Shwe, the head of the State Peace and Development Council—the name currently used by the military junta that took power in 1962—and Aung San Suu Kyi’s nascent party, the National League for Democracy. (Suu Kyi routed the junta in a 1990 election and she has been in and out of house arrest ever since. Her house arrest was extended upon Gambari’s departure.)
Even more significantly, Gambari subsequently briefed the UN Security Council on the state of affairs in Burma (known as Myanmar to the ruling SPDC). Myanmar was first seriously discussed by the Security Council less than a year ago. In each of the past 14 years, both the General Assembly and the UN Commission on Human Rights have censured the country and Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release 10 times in half as many years. These calls have gone unheeded.
Yet the Security Council, the only UN body with the authority to enforce its demands, has never considered action against Burma for fear of drawing China’s veto. China, a major trading partner with Burma, has historically been reluctant to censure other countries’ human rights records.
Now the U.S. delegation to the United Nations is spearheading a behind-the-scenes effort to obtain a Security Council resolution against the regime. Vacláv Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa issued a report last fall that gave new life to efforts to spur the Security Council into action. It made a strong case for the Security Council’s responsibility to act on Myanmar and reminded member states that the issue can be put on the formal agenda with 9 of 15 votes in favor. Because agenda items cannot be vetoed, China cannot prevent formal discussion of Myanmar—even repeated, and potentially embarrassing discussion. It can only thwart a specific resolution.
Some groups don’t believe China would be willing to veto a Security Council resolution. Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch believes that China may share, at least in part, the Havel-Tutu report’s concern about the problems spilling out of Burma’s borders. "China has begun to realize that the Burmese government is pulling its society toward disaster," Malinowski said. "There are problems such as drugs and AIDS and now bird flu that emanate from Burma and spread across the region."
Yet some Burmese exiles don’t share the optimism of the NGOs. Bo Hla Tint is a member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party who won a seat in parliament in the disregarded 1990 election and now represents the alternative government, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, in Washington, D. C. He believes the international community continues to "underestimate the regime." He believes that change will come with the combination of international pressure on the regime and "encouraging our own people to regain the strength of people power. We believe it’s a matter of time."
U Kyaw Win, a 72 year-old retired psychology professor living in Boulder, Colorado, has been in the United States since the 1962 coup. U Kyaw Win took an even darker view of the UN’s efforts in Burma. "The UN is a bunch of talkers that get big fat salaries," he said. U Kyaw Win suggested that the UN take another tack: prevent countries, like China, from selling arms to the junta. "If those army fellows don’t have any weapons," he says, "the Burmese people will knock them down with their own fists." Like Bo Hla Tint, U Kyaw Win wants to see the international community focus on helping "the people of Burma develop strength." "Any revolution has to come from inside," he said.
But for now any developments within Burma happen out of sight. And after 40-plus years of SPDC rule in Burma the international community has grown somewhat used to its human rights violations. As a result, other issues take priority at the Security Council. Although Woodrum believes there may already be nine votes in favor of putting Myanmar on the Security Council agenda, he cautions patience. "I think the countries want to find the right time," he said. "There’s a lot going on in the world right now."
Cameron Scott is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones.
