How much has the United States been ‘standing up against’ atrocities in Burma?
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| An ethnic Rakhine man with homemade weapons walks near houses that were set aflame during fighting between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya communities in Sittwe, Burma, on June 10. (Reuters) |
By Glenn Kessler
–Samantha Power, U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, Nov. 20, 2013
“Today, more than 1,000 political prisoners have been released, and we’re helping Burma build a credible electoral infrastructure ahead of its 2015 national elections. We’re supporting a process of constitutional reform and national reconciliation. As Burma moves toward greater openness and change, we are easing sanctions, while encouraging responsible investment and robust support for the people and civil society activists who suffered so long under the iron fist of dictatorship.”
The Obama administration has often pointed to the recent political reforms in Burma, also known as Myanmar, as one of its foreign-policy success stories. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, completed her lengthy term of house arrest and was elected a member of parliament as a brutal military dictatorship gave way to a quasi-military, semi-authoritarian process dominated by former regime officials.
President Obama rewarded the government of President Thein Shein with
a high-profile presidential visit to Burma in 2012, during which Thein
Sein made 11 commitments to deepen democracy and protect human rights.
Thein Sein reaffirmed these pledges when he visited the White House in
2013.
Such political transformations are always difficult, and the Obama
administration has had to balance its response. The United States was a
leader in imposing sanctions on the junta, but in order to encourage
more openness, many sanctions have been lifted and business investment
now is flowing into the country. Under a constitution written by the
military, at least 25 percent of the seats in parliament are reserved
for the military; Suu Kyi’s political party is greatly limited in the
number of seats it is permitted to contest. A provision in the
constitution currently prevents her from running for president.
One key question is whether the rush to lift sanctions robbed the
United States of leverage to prod the government to open even further
and to curtail human rights abuses, such as brutal attacks on Muslims
and continuing ethnic conflicts.
For the purposes of this fact check, we will examine how the
administration has stood up against atrocities and shown “robust support
for the people and civil society activists,” as asserted by Power and
Rice, especially as the United States proposes to step up military
cooperation with Burma. The risk is that the desire for a success-story
narrative makes U.S. officials increasingly reluctant to speak out.
The challenge of ongoing ethnic and sectarian violence — including in Shan State, Kachin State, and Rakhine State – remains an area of deep and on-going concern. If left unaddressed, it will undermine progress toward national reconciliation, stability, and lasting peace. Serious human rights abuses against civilians in several regions continue, including against women and children. Humanitarian access to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons remains a serious challenge and on-going crisis. The government and the ethnic nationalities need to work together urgently to find a path to lasting peace that addresses minority rights, deals with differences through dialogue not violence, heals the wounds of the past, and carries reforms forward. The situation in Rakhine State and the recent violence against the Rohingya and other Muslims last week only underscores the critical urgency of ensuring the safety and security of all individuals in the area, investigating all reports of violence and bringing those responsible to justice, according citizenship and full rights to the Rohingya, and bringing about economic opportunity for all local populations.
The Facts
During Rice’s speech, she applauded the fact that “1,000 political
prisoners have been released.” But she neglected to mention that these
were conditional releases, which means the government can throw
activists back into prison on the flimsiest of charges.
For instance, when The Fact Checker asked for evidence of Powers
standing up for human rights in Burma, an aide provided tweets from the
ambassador, noting that one prisoner was released after a tweet that
lauded “two years of real improvements on human rights.”
Unfortunately, this activist was arrested and jailed just weeks later, with new charges dating back to 2007. Power has not tweeted about the more recent arrest. There are reports of a sweeping New Year’s amnesty of political prisoners—though apparently these still would be conditional–but there remain more than 1,000 Rohingya prisoners.
A senior State Department official,
assigned to answer The Fact Checker’s questions under the condition of
anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, said the United States
remains concerned about the conditional releases and is “actively
encouraging” the government to revise “bad laws,” such as those
concerning the right of assembly, that are the basis for many of the rearrests. “We are not shy about calling the government out,” the official said.
Earlier in 2013, civil-society
groups were concerned about a draft law that they believed would greatly
restrict their activities. The State Department official said that the
United States brought together members of parliament and civil society
experts to revise the wording. “The current draft is quite a good law,”
the official said.
Still, the draft has not been passed into law and other laws have not
been updated. Civil society groups have become anxious and are preparing to protest what they call repressive laws.
The timelines for progress asserted
by government officials also keep slipping. On July 15, in a speech in
the United Kingdom, Thein Sein declared: “Over the coming weeks, we
will have a nationwide cease-fire and the guns will go silent everywhere
in Myanmar for the very first time in over 60 years.” But the guns have
not gone silent and last week, chief negotiator, U Aung Min, said he
is “hoping to present positive news of successful peace talks to
regional leaders when they gather in Myanmar for their ASEAN meetings in
2014.”
Many of Thein Sein’s commitments to Obama remain only partially fulfilled or even ignored.
The State Department official acknowledged no action has been taken on a
promise to establish an office in Burma for the U.N. High Commissioner
for Human Rights. “We’re pressing them very hard to open a U.N. office,”
the official said.
Still, there is evidence that human rights appear to take a back seat in the administration’s public talking points. During a presentation in the fall at the Asia Society
on “responsible investment” in Burma, held on the sidelines of the U.N.
General Assembly, State Department Burma coordinator Judith Cefkin made
no reference to ethnic conflicts, attacks on Muslims or even Suu Kyi as
she declared that a “true priority” for the United States was economic
development.
“One of the very key areas of work and an area that is a true
priority for the U.S. government in our policy is the economic
development of Myanmar, but economic development which takes place in a
way which broadly enhances the welfare of the people of Myanmar,” Cefkin
told an audience that included Burma’s foreign minister.
In the interview, the senior State
Department official noted that, unlike many other Western countries, the
United States has maintained some sanctions and the so-called Specially
Designated Nationals list for Burma maintained by the Treasury
Department remains active. The administration recently expanded
the list but the additions were all related to alleged interactions
with North Korea, not human rights. Indeed, the news release regarding
one such designation took pains not to blame the Burmese government, emphasizing that
“it does not target the Government of Burma, which has continued to
take positive steps in severing its military ties with North Korea.”
Meanwhile, even as greater
political space has opened up in Burma, a wave of anti-Muslim violence
also has emerged. In particular, attacks by extremist Buddhists have
targeted the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group that faces
state-sponsored discrimination, including a refusal to grant citizenship
despite decades of living within Burma’s borders. U.S. Ambassador Derek
Mitchell has twice traveled to the region.
“Led by our embassy in Rangoon, we pressed the Government of Burma to
take a strong principled public stand on the issue, and to crack down
on all perpetrators of violence without prejudice in a timely fashion
according to due process,” the State Department official said. “We
urged stronger and more decisive measures to combat sectarian violence
and religious extremism, and to address serious and ongoing human rights
abuses, including in Rakhine State.”
The Obama administration co-sponsored a U.N. General Assembly resolution
that expressed concern about the treatment of the Rohingya in Burma,
but it has not supported calls from U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights Navi Pillay, 12 Nobel Peace laureates and Physicians for Human
Rights (PHR) for an independent investigation into anti-Muslim violence.
Some 140,000 people have fled to internal displacement camps to escape
the violence.
“The best prevention against future
violence is accountability, and our focus thus far has been on pressing
the Burmese government to do more on this front,” the official said in
explaining why the United States has not supported an independent
inquiry. “The government has taken some steps to investigate and
prosecute individuals for the violence, but there is much more the
government can and should do. At this time, our assessment has been
that supporting a call for such an international investigation would not
advance this goal. We will continue to evaluate the situation and
adjust our policy accordingly.”
The official said that the administration did prevail on the
government to dismantle the notorious border guard—known as the
NaSaKa—which was accused of leading the attacks on the Rohingyas. The
guard was replaced by local Rakhine police, which some reports suggest
would mean little improvement in the treatment of the Muslim minority.
“We continue to monitor what has replaced it,” the official said.
An official with Human Rights Watch was quoted as saying the Treasury Department had considered sanctioning the NaSaKa, which is what prompted Thein Sein to abolish it.
Asked why individual leaders of the
NaSaKa have not been targeted for sanctions, the State Department
official said: “As a practical matter, listing of individuals who were
part of NaSaKa would have been unlikely to have had a demonstrable
impact beyond the action the Burmese Government took on its own. As
evidence becomes available we continue to review both entities and
individuals for new listings.”
The official said that the administration is “really urging the government to create a path to citizenship” for the Rohingyas. “The government says they have a plan for that,” the official asserted. “We don’t think it is just lip service—we have seen some signs of preparation in government– but they remain worried about the local reaction.”
Notably, Thein Sein defended controversial Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu after Time magazine labeled him “the face of Buddhist terror.”
The Obama administration’s push to
expand military-to-military ties with Burma has also alarmed ethnic
groups in the country, which make up 40 percent of the population.
“We are deeply concerned that your current approach to
military-to-military relations will neither prove beneficial to our
mutual goals of ending the Burmese military’s perpetration of human
rights violations against us, nor bring us closer to national
reconciliation,” 133 ethnic civil-society groups wrote in a letter to Obama
and the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Australia. “We urge
you not to pursue military-to-military engagement without taking into
consideration our concerns,” which included setting preconditions such
as human rights training and ending the military’s lucrative economic
enterprises.
The administration’s determination
to expand military contacts, including training, has been viewed
skeptically by some members of Congress. “I don’t believe the Burmese
military needs to be trained to stop killing, raping, and stealing land
from people in their country,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) at a
recent congressional hearing.
Power was responsible for helping to create the Obama
administration’s Atrocities Prevention Board, an interagency task force.
The administration’s most comprehensive description
of what the board has done in its first year barely mentions Burma,
though it asserts that “the U.S. Government is playing an important
ongoing role in supporting efforts to address violence and protect
vulnerable communities.” The only specific example is supporting a
special rapporteur to carry out investigations in Burma—whose mandate
expires in March.
By contrast, reports indicate that the Atrocities Prevention Board played an active role in seeking to halt fighting in the Central African Republic.
The Pinocchio Test
U.S. policy in Burma certainly faces many countervailing pressures,
from making sure the government does not adopt merely the window
dressing of democracy to fostering responsible U.S. investment in the
long-closed country. But the available evidence suggests that U.S.
officials have rhetorically boxed themselves in so that they find it
increasingly difficult to use tools they created, such as robust
Treasury sanctions or the Atrocities Prevention Board, to punish
perpetrators of ethnic and anti-Muslim violence.
The transition from dictatorship to democracy rarely happens on a
straight line and often there are setbacks. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party
recently dropped suggestions that it would boycott the 2015 elections if
the constitution was not changed to make her eligible to be president.
The reasons for the shift are unclear, but certainly Western governments
such as the United States have invested greatly in ensuring competitive
elections take place.
In any case, U.S. officials are getting ahead of themselves when they
assert that the administration has been “standing up” against
atrocities, given that attacks have continued almost unabated with
little or no consequences for the killers. (In fact, virtually nothing
has changed since Power wrote that blog post in late 2012; it could
appear today with not a word altered.) Moreover, rather than applaud the
release of political prisoners, U.S. officials should always highlight
that they are conditionally released, subject to laws that need to be
scrapped.
Burma could one day be a foreign-policy success story, but without
constant vigilance by the United States, both in word and deed, it could
tip into failure.
