Coming to the Bargaining Table

There is a growing assumption that Burma’s political impasse may be coming to an end.

This view is based on the United States’ new policy of direct engagement, the military regime’s call to halt international sanctions and the willingness of Aung San Suu Kyi to cooperate with the junta to have sanctions lifted.

At the recent UN General Assembly, the generals called for the end of sanctions, saying they had “no moral basis,” hindered the “economic and social development of the people” and were used as “a political tool” to interfere in internal domestic affairs.

With the scheduled 2010 election approaching, are the Burmese generals really preparing to engage with the international community as well as their internal political opposition?

If so, will the ineffective sanctions be the quid pro quo for a meaningful dialogue with the opposition and the release of political prisoners, including Suu Kyi?

Soon after the regime received Suu Kyi’s recent letter to Snr-Gen Than Shwe, the generals promptly responded by dispatching their liaison officer, Aung Kyi, a retired major-general who is also the regime’s labor minister. Within a week, he met with Suu Kyi two times.
To break a two-decade diplomat standoff, the US temporarily eased the travel restrictions it imposed on Burmese officials and diplomats started a high level dialogue with Burmese generals on the sideline of the UN General Assembly meeting.

The regime now faces renewed pressure for all-inclusive political change and a free and fair 2010 election with clear conditions set by the UN-led international community, Burma’s domestic political parties, led by National League for Democracy, and cease-fire ethnic groups.

To be sure, there are multiple interests among all parties, but each group has spoken out about the removal of sanctions in recent weeks.

Also, this week Suu Kyi met with three Western diplomats in Rangoon to gather information about the sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and other countries.

A Brief History of US Sanctions on Burma

In the light of the human rights abuses committed by the military regime since 1988, the first US economic sanctions began in June 1993 with an arms embargo titled “Suspension of Munitions Export Licenses to Burma,” a few months after President Bill Clinton took office.

When the US saw no progress on human rights and democracy in Burma, President Clinton signed a proclamation to impose a second set of sanctions that banned visas for the junta’s leaders and family members in October 1996. 

However, only one month after the second sanctions were imposed, the regime organized a gang attack on Suu Kyi’s motorcade in Rangoon on November 9. The attack led to a third set of sanctions in an executive order titled “Prohibiting New Investment in Burma” in May 1997. Since then, no new US investments have been allowed in Burma. The executive order exempted existing US investment in Burma prior to May 21, which protected the interest of the US oil company UNOCAL. 

The junta’s attacks on Suu Kyi reached a peak on May 30, 2003, when thugs attacked her motorcade in Depayin, in which she narrowly escaped but dozens of her party members and supporters were killed.

In July, the US Congress imposed another tougher sanction called the “Burma Freedom and Democracy Act” which expanded the list of visa bans to the former and present leadership of the Union Solidarity Development Association, a junta-backed group, prohibited the importation of products from Burma, froze assets of the regime’s leaders and their family members in the US and blocked loans of international financial institutions. The act was also directed at two major military business entities, the Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC).

Moreover, then US President George W. Bush issued an executive order prohibiting any financial transactions with three state-owned banks, the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB), Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank (MICB) and Myanmar Economic Bank (MEB).

The US Congress Research Service reported in October 2007: “Burmese accounts in Chinese banks were confirmed in January 2006 when the Bank of China ordered Chinese banks to terminate all U.S. dollar business with the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and the Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank.” 

The three banks are only authorized by the regime to do foreign currency transactions with international banks. The BFDA’s action crippled any financial transactions of Burmese state-owned or private banks through the US banking network.

However, the US sanctions didn’t end the regime’s brutality, as the world saw when the generals cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations in September 2007.