Monday 2 April 2012

In Which I Actually Talk About Burma

Some good analysis here of Aung San Suu Kyi's putative (the results won't be confirmed for a few days) election to the parliament of Burma.

The article touches a bit on one of the major concerns some people in the opposition have had, which is that her new position within the government will take away some of Aung San Suu Kyi's impact as a powerful outside voice, while not actually granting her any real influence over government decisions.

Activists and governments around the world are rushing to embrace the warmer, friendlier Burma with open arms, and I get that, I do.  And there have been genuinely, almost shockingly, positive steps.  Hell, in January, over 650 political prisoners - many of whom had been arrested in 1988, and had thought they would never see their families again - were freed.  Just try looking at some of the photos of family reunions in this article without getting a little teary... but keep in mind that, according to Human Rights Watch, there could be as many as 850 political prisoners still languishing in jail, and unaccounted for.  In a similar vein, the government recently signed an initial ceasefire agreement with leaders of the Karen National Union (an armed group that controls large parts of Karen State, one of Burma's marginalised ethnic areas).  If a ceasefire is successful, it would end what many have called the world's longest-running civil war... but according to reports from Karen State, if there is a ceasefire on, someone forgot to tell the soldiers on the ground.

What I'm getting at is that the pace of events, and the speed with which the world has moved to welcome these reforms (as they should), also means that people raising legitimate problems with the reforms risk being dismissed as irrelevant and unable to move with the times - and opposition leaders may feel railroaded into playing nice with the government that everyone is now praising.

Still, yesterday Burma witnessed something that most of its people thought they would never see:  an election that was from all reports relatively free and fair, in which they were able to vote for the woman who has been the living symbol of Burma's struggle for democracy for years, and after which it looks like she will actually be allowed to take office.  That's pretty damned amazing.