THE RELEASE BY the Burmese military of Aung San Suu Kyi from 20 months house arrest has rightly been greeted with caution. Burma’s generals have proven themselves to be nothing if not stubborn. It remains highly unlikely that they are thinking of a graceful exit from politics. Instead it is probable that they are hoping to use the freedom of the Nobel Peace laureate as a bargaining counter in their relations with an almost universally hostile international community.
The Burmese economy is sinking ever further into an economic mire. The corrupt military regime has made fortunes for itself, thanks to illegal logging and drugs operations but the man in the street lives in ever more straitened circumstances.
The important point to remember about the release of Aung San Suu Kyi is that it has not come about as a result of internal political pressure. Though she remains a highly popular figure, whose National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory in elections in 1990, (elections which the junta refused to recognize), it was not popular protest that forced the Burmese generals to free her. Burma remains a tightly controlled society. The secret police use a network of informants to control the angry populace.
It is hard at the moment therefore to see Aung San Suu Kyi as anything but a pawn in the Burmese regime’s long game of chess with the international community. So wrecked is the economy that Burma urgently needs humanitarian aid from abroad. The outside world wants to do something to relieve the agony of the majority of Burmese people. But the provision of that help has so far been conditional upon political reform, the first part of which was the freeing of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The generals must be hoping that her release will open the door to humanitarian aid. Once that step has been taken, they will doubtless be planning to try and finesse the restored international relations into a wider acceptance of their continued grip on power. They have tried, and largely failed, to attract maverick foreign investors by offering outrageously generous terms. However if they can now present a more benign face to the world at large, international companies may be more tempted to take up their tempting investment offers.
There is however possibly a more sinister motive behind Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. Though she herself has sought to play down her role within her country’s politics, she is the embodiment of the opposition to the military junta. Without her considerable moral and nonviolent leadership, the democracy movement in Burma would be markedly weakened. Clearly the generals would like nothing more than to see her removed permanently from the scene. The horrible possibility therefore exists that Aung San Suu Kyi could now become a target for assassination.
Had she been killed while effectively in military custody, the domestic and international outcry would very probably have been fatal, even for a regime that has such a tight grip on power. If however she is slain in ambiguous circumstances, perhaps by some apparent loner with an obscure political grudge, then the Burmese government might be able to argue with a semblance of plausibility, that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime.
We must all wish that no such terrible murder takes place, but it must be accepted that this is likely to be the single event which could sustain the generals in power.
It is therefore a matter of urgency that the world community brokers reforms. Aung San Suu Kyi has demonstrated that she is a politician of considerable stature and wisdom. She would perhaps accept a South African-style solution in which a hated and criminal regime would be allowed to leave power without retribution. Instead a process of truth and reconciliation could be instigated. But for this to work, it will need the swift and wise political and economic support of outside nations. Delay will only increase the personal risk to Aung San Suu Kyi herself.
