Hozan Alan Senauke reports on the recent meeting between Burma’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
As a member of a movement that has been engaged in a long struggle to effect change through nonviolent means, I have learned to value above all other attributes in colleagues and supporters disinterested, active commitment. Such commitment is seldom given to pyrotechnic display, but it is always there, and it provides constant assurance that the essential flame that keeps our cause vibrant will not die out… When such passion is brought to bear on public issues, it is a potent instrument for political and social change. — Aung San Suu Kyi, writing this week for the International Herald Tribune’s “Global Agenda”
Photographs of Burma’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton embracing cut through my many questions and doubts. I read real connection and commitment in these images, the passion of two strong-minded women, and this gives me hope. As Daw Suu writes: “When such passion is brought to bear on public issues, it is a potent instrument for political and social change.”
Hilary Clinton’s diplomatic mission to Burma/Myanmar last week covered a lot of political ground. She met several times with Aung San Suu Kyi, with new president U Thein Sein and other officials at the remote national capital of Naypyidaw, and with leaders of oppositional ethnic groups and other social organizations. Clinton left Myanmar, laying down a set of challenges for the quasi-civilian government: release of all political prisoners, the development of democratic rights and the rule of law, and cessation of internal ethnic conflicts which have led to allegations of war crimes. On Thursday, December 1 speaker of the Burmese Lower House Thura Shwe Mann responded by promising the release all political prisoners across Burma, though he offered no timetable for this action.
In turn, Clinton announced new grants of $1.2 million in education, health and humanitarian aid. She also offered to support international assistance from the World Bank and the IMF to reform Myanmar’s idiosyncratic banking and currency systems, allowing the development of international credit and trade. But key issues — removing comprehensive trade sanctions and establishing full diplomatic recognition with Myamar— remain on hold for the present. At the U.S. Embassy complex on Yangon’s Inya Lake, Clinton said, “We are prepared to go further if the reforms maintain momentum, but history teaches us to be cautious… there have been serious setbacks and grave disappointments over the last decades. We want to see a sustainable reform effort.”
For all the hope that flows from this diplomatic mission, the first visit by a U.S. Secretary of State since 1955, there is no guarantee of change in Burma. The military still holds the reins of power, however they pretend otherwise. When Hilary Clinton landed in Burma, her arrival was consigned to a paragraph on page two of the regime’s propagandistic New Light of Myanmar; comments by the prime minister of Belarus occupied most of the front page. And while Clinton was addressing the press at the U.S. Embassy, a few miles away U Phoe Phyu, a 31-year-old lawyer and former political prisoner, was facing a state prosecutor on charges of illegal assembly and disobeying government orders. He was arrested in October leading farmers in a protest against land confiscation by government-connected corporations. Phoe Phyu’s case underscores the limits of judicial independence and press freedom in Myanmar.
The Burmese house of hope is still a fragile construction. But the passion and active commitment of Aung San Suu Kyi and many thousands of anonymous activists and ordinary citizens promises that even reversals of fortune are impermanent. They depend on the faith and support of friends like us near and far away.
As a side note, it is interesting to see the U.S. press prominence given Clinton’s journey to Burma, a little-known nation outside the mainstream of international politics. These days there are not many places in the world where U.S. support is so openly courted, even as Secretary Clinton offers blunt words and few promises. A diplomatic success? Maybe so. It might be that two “outcasts” — one impoverished and one a great world power — strangely need each other. But that’s another story.
