Daniel Pedersen

“It is the ‘appeasement policy’ going under the name of ‘Constructive Engagement’ practiced by ASEAN etc. That has been causing so much division among the Burmese freedom movement and encouraging the junta to take steps to realize its nuclear ambition. ASEAN countries are not the only ones which have been practicing the appeasement policy. Perhaps, in the hope of coaxing the regime to democratic transition, former governments of Japan and still some EU countries like Germany, France, Netherland, Belgium, Denmark etc. have been doing the same. As Burmese dictatorship was a client of the West during Cold War period, the said countries perhaps assume that the dictators could be made to see the light gradually, with their appeasement and collaboration policy. The operative word here is ‘gradually’.

The dictators are not afraid of anyone. They are ready to die for power and they will cling to it, by all means, unless they are forced to part with it. Daw Suu was wrong to assume that it was fear that had made the junta to be corrupt and cling to power. It is power that corrupts the junta. It is true that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The junta’s real agenda is to set up a military empire like those of the feudal days of Burma, before the British occupation of the country.

One very negative view we have to eliminate is that the junta cannot be overthrown. It can be overthrown with people’s power movement, real international pressure and armed resistance. In an absolute dictatorship like that of the SPDC, there are contradictions within the system itself. It is vital that the Burmese freedom movement should employ a strategy to magnify those contradictions.”

KNU Vice President David Thackrabaw

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