More bricks in the wall around her

The Economist
August 19, 2009

The junta cocks another snook at the Burmese people and foreign opinion
The only surprise was that it took so long. After many delays, a court in Rangoon this week delivered its verdict on opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The ruling junta’s staunchest foe was consigned to another 18 months of detention at her home, as punishment for a bizarre incident in May when an American eccentric swam to her lakeside villa. This, the court ruled, broke the terms of the house arrest she was already serving. Her reasonable defence, that as a prisoner she was in no position to fend off uninvited visitors, was brushed aside by the court.

The pretext provided by the hapless visitor, John Yettaw, a 54-year-old Mormon, may have been fortuitous. But the outcome was never in doubt. The junta was always determined to prolong Miss Suu Kyi’s detention, which was about to expire, until after elections that are planned for some time next year. At large, Miss Suu Kyi, who is probably as loved as the generals are hated, would jeopardise this tightly controlled exercise. The last time the regime held an election, in 1990—when she was already locked up—her party won over 60% of the votes and 80% of the seats. The results have never been honoured.

This week Miss Suu Kyi’s initial sentence was for three years’ hard labour. But in a carefully choreographed intervention, the interior minister promptly stood up to announce that the junta leader, General Than Shwe, had magnanimously commuted it. By giving a gentler sentence he may hope to minimise international outrage. Another explanation was hinted at by Miss Suu Kyi’s lawyer, who suggested the act of clemency might also complicate the appeal she is to make against the verdict. At the very least, the manner in which Than Shwe directed her trial is a reminder, if one were necessary, of how completely the armed forces control all of Burma’s institutions. The whole country is a prisoner of the regime.

Mr Yettaw, who testified he was motivated to make his swim by a vision in a dream, was told to serve four years’ hard labour and three years in prison. Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese scholar at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, suggests that the regime will be keen to expel him sooner than that. The generals probably do not want Bill Clinton pitching up in Rangoon, as he did in North Korea, to appeal for mercy.

The trial has given the opposition, many of whose leaders are in exile or in jail, some publicity. It has provoked routine international condemnation and calls from activists and others for an arms embargo and further sanctions. Yet it is doubtful that much will change. Burma already faces Western sanctions, while enjoying trading links with Asian neighbours. The country can rely on Chinese and Russian support in the United Nations Security Council, so harsh new measures against the regime—even an arms embargo—are unlikely. When the UN’s secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, visited Burma in July to beg the generals to free Miss Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, they simply ignored him. This week the Security Council could not even agree on a statement criticising the verdict on Miss Suu Kyi. As Western and even South-East Asian governments condemned it, China urged the world to respect Burma’s laws.

Burma has been under a military dictatorship since 1962 and the generals’ grip looks as strong as ever. Nonetheless, the planned general election raises the tantalising possibility that politics could change. Although the armed forces will remain supreme, the new administration will have a civilian face. The election will be neither free nor fair—it is not even clear how candidates will be selected—yet the establishment of a new system could still amount to the greatest upheaval in domestic politics since the army seized power. The most optimistic analysis is that the new arrangements offer the remote possibility of some change for the better, even if that is not their architects’ intention.

Outsiders may have more to worry about than the lack of democracy in Burma, however. Last month Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, while in Thailand for a security conference, suggested that Burma may be receiving assistance from North Korea in building nuclear weapons. Defectors speaking to Australian researchers have alleged that an elaborate nuclear programme is being concealed in tunnels. If such suspicions persist, that issue may come to shape American thinking on Burma at least as much as the persecution of Miss Suu Kyi and other unfortunate democrats.