Daniel Pedersen

MIZZIMA

Don Talenywun

October 20, 2009

The State Peace and Development Council also has warships in a standoff with Bangladesh, the result of more than half a century’s of the neighbours’ failure to demarcate a common border.

Warships and Bangladesh braces for war

It also stands accused of trying to acquire nuclear arms technology from North Korea and Russia.

In the most southeastern areas of Burma and stretching into the north abutting Karenni State, the junta is at war with the Karen – as it has been since 1949.

The Karenni live in misery, with much of their territory to be flooded by dams along the Salween River and its tributaries from which they will reap no benefit.

In the massive territory that constitutes Shan State and includes the ethnic Chinese enclaves of the Wa, Kokang and Mongla people, the SPDC is buildings its military presence, an ominous sign it intends to purge the region of dissidents before its election.

In an editorial this week (week of Oct 11-17), Burma’s state newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, appealed to the United States for assistance in its anti-narcotics efforts, naming the United Wa State Army as its nemesis.

In fact the Kokang people, clustered to the north of the Wa region and the Mongla, to the Wa’s south, have been tarred with the same brush.

The junta is currently positioning artillery in those regions.

Along the Indian border the Naga people maintain a campaign of resistance to centralised governance as they watch India strike deals on dams that will change he face of the Chindwin River forever.

Ironically the electricity generated by the planned massive hydropower schemes will be taken by high voltage lines to Uttar Pradesh, or Indian Kashmir, in a bid for peace through development inevitably at6 Burma’s expense.

Near the border with Bangladesh the Muslim Rohingya people still pay astronomical fees to be thrown into unseaworthy vessels to make a break for Malaysia.

In short, the SPDC is at war with its own people.

Neighbouring Thailand is expecting clashes with the Burmese military as it forces people out of the country and will operate on high alert for the next few months along its more than 2000km.

Burma border clashes likely as poll nears

Regularly during the dry season mortar fire is exchanged between Thailand and forces within Burma’s boundaries, if not the SPDC then one of its allies.

Every country surrounding Burma has it share of refugees.

One of the big gripes of the opposition is the new constitution of 2008, according to which next year’s election will be contested.

The constitution was supposedly ratified by referendum just eight days after Cyclone Nargis wiped out the mouths of the Irrawaddy River in April last year in Burma’s greatest natural disaster of modern times.

Cyclone Nargis

People were washed away in their tens of thousands and the true death toll will never be known, the generals initially rejected foreign assistance and the military was hopelessly ill-prepared to help the population.

The foreign aid that did get in was sold on the black market or some was re-packaged with individual generals’ names plastered on the wrapping with the aim of generating good will for those commanders.

The constitution enshrines the military in the political process, along the lines of Indonesia’s Suharto-era dwifungsi model.

The Indonesian military: DWI Fungsi and territorial operations

It reserves 25 per cent of parliamentary seats for junta appointment and a 75 per cent majority is required for major amendments to standing laws or the constitution itself.

The first signs the junta had plans to neutralise the ethnic minorities before the 2010 election, a date for which has not been announced, came in June last year.

Troops of the SPDC and an allied militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, launched major and sustained offensives against base camps of the Karen National Liberation Army.

During last year’s rainy season the SPDC took two major KNLA base camps, that of 103 Special Battalion and Sixth Brigade’s 201 Battalion based at Wah Kay Kee, both to Mae Sot’s South.

During this rainy season, which is only now ending, a wide offensive swept from Karen State’s capital Pa-an to the Moei River, which forms the border with Thailand.

Thai authorities struggled with a sudden influx of refugees from Seventh Brigade, about 6,000 people.

KNLA 7th Brigade loses a quarter of its territory

Many of them are still dependent on international handouts of food and live under thin plastic sheeting in pitiful conditions without even mosquito nets in this malaria-ridden part of the world.

They are mostly Karen, their homes, schools and churches have been burned down and it has been made clear they are considered enemies of the state, unwelcome in the country of their birth.

Zipporah Sein is the Karen National Union’s general secretary, elected in October of last year at the KNU’s 14th Congress since 1948.

She replaced Pado Mahn Sha who was assassinated at his home on February 14 last year by Karen assassins working for the DKBA, and in turn the SPDC Zipporah says the new constitution is a “death sentence” for recognition of the ethnic minorities.

Burma’s New Constitution: A Death Sentence for Ethnic Diversity

The KNLA is now preparing itself for another sustained offensive throughout the dry season, which is beginning now and will probably last until April.

Its Fifth Brigade region, with terrain too difficult to fight in during the wet, will now be targeted as vehicular access becomes possible in some areas.

And deep within Sixth Brigade, around Dooplaya district, another SPDC push is underway that Zipporah predicts will create huge numbers of refugees, dwarfing the 6,000 from Seventh Brigade in June and July.

The Institute for Political Analysis and Documentation, an independent body described the junta’s constitutional referendum as “a complete sham” and predicted much the same for the coming election.

Burma: voting in vain of democracy

Burma’s Buddhist monks, who hold the most sway in Burmese society among the common people of any individual or institution have been banned from voting in the coming election, as they were during the constitutional referendum.

Referendum law excludes monks and bans dissent

In the lead up to the two year anniversary of 2007’s so-called “Saffron Revolution”

(Burmese monks do not wear saffron robes), the ruling Buddhist authority, the Sangha, demanded Burma’s generals apologise for their treatment of monks and release the hundreds that remained behind bars.

The Sangha said if its demands were not met the junta, its soldiers and their families would face Pattanikkujana, the refusal by monks to accept alms from those considered to have violated Buddhist principles.

The junta did not apologise nor release the jailed monks, but rather began a campaign of harassment, jailed more monks and posted military intelligence officers to keep a close watch on monasteries considered liable to begin any insurrection.

At least 30 monks were arrested in Burma in September and October, the two-year anniversary of the Saffron Revolution

These are not encouraging signs of an upcoming free and fair election.

As the Burma Army’s troops mass in the country’s north and, far from cowering, Burmese citizens prepare to do battle against their own “government’s” soldiers in the window of opportunity when torrential rains do not pummel the jungles, some countries talk of engagement.

Gentle persuasion will not work with a military regime that has taken Burma in little more than 50 years from the world’s largest exporter of rice to what Macquarie University’s Professor Sean Turnell now describes as an “undeveloping nation”.

The generals have ruined the economy while enriching themselves without taking a moment to ponder whether they might have got their economic model wrong.

Engagement would generally assume some modicum of trust among the interacting parties.

Either that or parties looking to engage have assumed that things can only get worse without some form of intervention.

In the next few months in Burma, things are going to get worse.

And Burmese citizens who have organised themselves into opposition blocs, employing tactics from outright violence to insistent diplomacy, and forged alliances despite their differences have sent their messages to the world.

The world stands warned.

ENDS

Burma wages total war, 9.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating