Southeast Asia Archive

BANGKOK, Thailand — As the United States and the European Union consider tightening economic sanctions against the Burmese military regime, U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari is touring Asia to promote the idea of giving the repressive generals “incentives” to change their ways. Gambari is spinning the idea of some form of financial help to address the economic mess Burma has descended into under prolonged dictatorship. It was financial desperation among a population of 54 million, most living on the breadline, that triggered last month’s monk-led mass protests over fuel price rises of up to 500 percent. Gambari is talking vaguely […]

The crisis in Myanmar has bedeviled the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a time when its members had hoped to focus on celebrating the organization’s 40th anniversary. Although most other ASEAN governments oppose the military government’s repression of Myanmar’s peaceful opposition, they have proven unable to break fully with their traditional policy of non-interference in member governments’ internal affairs. The decision to invite Myanmar into ASEAN in March 1997 resulted from a fleeting consensus among members that granting Myanmar membership was preferable to its continued exclusion. Even those ASEAN states most censorious of the Myanmar government, led since […]

If Myanmar’s military leaders appear immune to internal pressure for change, and if they care little about the protestations of the “international community” unless such pressure can directly effect their interests, the two rising world powers on Myanmar’s borders perhaps hold the last hope for influencing the junta. The conventional wisdom says that even if China is ultimately unwilling to play a positive role, India can be counted on. “I think India would be able to exercise influence on Myanmar. China needs natural resources so badly that it may not be willing to call for the use of force. As […]

In the past week, up to 200 of people have died in Burma in the government’s violent suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations, according to various reports. But thousands more in Burma are routinely forcibly relocated and their villages burned by the army in an ongoing campaign against the country’s ethnic minorities. Now the Washington, D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is using commercially provided satellite imagery to catalogue the abuses. The AAAS’ “Science and Human Rights Project,” funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Open Society Institute, released a report Sept. 28 that documents the destruction of rural […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. BURMA LAUNCHES CRACKDOWN — Officials in Burma (or Myanmar as the ruling military junta insists on calling it) ended their brief period of tolerance for growing street protests last week, introducing measures to quell dissent and sending security forces out into the streets with orders to take “extreme measures” if necessary. The crackdown began early Wednesday morning when state security forces reportedly broke into two Rangoon monasteries and began beating and arresting monks. Authorities also […]

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — After a week of mass protests against Myanmar’s military regime, the scale of which had not been seen in two decades, the uprising has been effectively crushed by the country’s armed forces. Sunday saw the numbers of demonstrators on the streets of Yangon plummet from an estimated 100,000 earlier in the week to several dozen, while sources on the ground confirm that today (Monday) streets in the former capitol remain vacant. While protests inside the country have been effectively extinguished by security forces, demonstrations continue outside Myanmar’s embassies in capitols around the world. Meanwhile, United Nations […]