Burma (Myanmar) lies between India and China, with a population in 2020 of 55 million.
Burma was colonised from the early 19th century by the British who, protected by the Imperial Army, made vast profits from the extraction of natural resources of oil, gas and teak forests, leaving vast dust bowls behind them. Rice and precious stones were also exported.
An Independence movement started in the 1930s amongst the students and monks, led by Aung San, who exploited Japanese occupation during the Second World War to win independence in 1946. Aung San was assassinated in 1948, with the declaration of independence imminent. Aung San united the ideas of Buddhism, Socialism and democracy, combining the ideas of Marx, Nehru and Voltaire.
1958. A Military Coup is led by General Ne Win. Undermined by an election victory by Aung San’s Deputy, Nu, Ne Win leads another military coup in 1962. He abolishes the constitution and free press and imposes strict censorship on the rest of the media in one of the most literate societies in Asia. Ne Win abolishes currency and introduces a new currency, leading the nation’s people (most with savings in cash) into poverty overnight. Burma becomes the least developed country in Asia while Ne Win invests in property in London and Tokyo and amasses a huge fortune through trading in gem-stones.
1988. Democracy uprising. Ne Win’s lucky number is 9, so the uprising takes place on the 8th minute of the 8th hour on the 8th day of the 8th month of 1988. It starts with a dock strike and is quickly supported by all sections of the population. Suu Kyi (pronounced “Su Chi”), daughter of Aung San, returns from her home in England and agrees to join the democracy movement. Suu Kyi addresses half a million on the streets of Rangoon calling for restoration of democracy and elections. The National League for Democracy (the NLD) is formed.
Burmese army move in and shoot to kill everyone out on the street. 3,000 die. Doctors at Rangoon hospital, refusing to release the injured to the army until they are treated, are shot. Protests forming in front of the hospital are also shot dead. The bodies of the dead and injured are forcibly removed by convoys of army trucks to Rangoon Crematorium and burnt, dead or alive. Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest for the next 6 years, eventually being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She is released in 1995 but remains under constant military surveillance and forbade from seeing her English husband and two sons. 3000 party workers are also arrested. After the uprising Ne Win appears in person on television – “If there are more demonstrations, the army will shoot to kill”.
1990. The generals, thinking they are now safe, call elections. Suu Kyi’s NLD win 82% of the vote. Aung San Suu Kyi is the elected leader of Burma. The Generals refuse to give up power
Since the coup, 65% of the Generals’ money has come from oil companies. The oil pipeline to take oil from Burma into neighbouring Thailand, is being built by Total (half owned by the French Government) and Americans Unacal. It will make the Generals an estimated $400 million per year.
And the British are back in Burma. The Scott inquiry put pressure on the receiver dealing with the winding up of BMARC. The receiver revealed to Gerald James, then-Chair of Astra when they took over BMARC, that BMARC, implicated in illegal trading with Iraq, were also trading arms to the Burmese regime in 1990, 2 years after the crack-down against the democracy movement. This arms trade was in spite of the British Government’s declaration that they would not be supplying arms to Burma.
BMARC had a secret order book that also contained information on other covert operations that they were conducting on behalf of the Intelligence Community. British Foreign Office minister Jeremy Hanley states that contacts with British business will help Burma move towards democracy (like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia presumably). The Australians did the same, the Prime Minister Bob Hawke, condemning the regime and then leading a Trade Mission there.
The “Death Railway”, built in Burma by the Japanese during World War 2 at the cost of 16,000 allied lives and 100,000 Burmese lives, was extended by the Generals, again using slave labour, including children. A family who cannot supply an adult to do the work, or who cannot make a payment, are forced to give up a child for slave labour. The children are also forced to make bricks for the army, who sell them to the contractors.
Over a 3 year period, 200,000 people were drafted in and 300 lives lost by execution, disease and exhaustion. A man, attempting to video the evidence, lost his wife to the military who strung her up in her own village and beat her for three days before an army captain came along and cut off both her hands with a knife. In response to this, the Burmese Government say that there is a long and proud history of “volunteer” labour in Burma.
The Death Railway is for the transportation of soldiers and supplies into the region where Total and Unacal are building the pipeline for the Military Dictatorship.
British Airways, Kuoni and Orient Express also share the military junta’s point of view of Burma, and invest heavily. Prisoners in chains prepare the moat around the Imperial Palace in Mandalay for 1996, declared the “Year of the Tourist” by the military. The regime says that these labourers are criminals, but this is in a country where you get 10 years for writing a poem or singing a song in favour of democracy.
Rudyard Kipling’s dreamy ‘Road to Mandalay’ (that he never saw) has been widened to form an expressway, again by slave labour – they know it as the “Road of No Return”. Amnesty reports that two “volunteers” attempting to escape were executed on the spot, one of them hacked to death.
American James Sherwood is the chairman of Orient Express Hotels and “Road to Mandalay” River Cruises. He gave $35 million to the Burmese for “shore facilities to promote river tourism in Burma”. Sherwood only visits the principle cities, does not travel into forbidden regions and has been informed by the senior CIA representative in the area that the allegations of slavery are completely unsubstantiated, and that any abuses that do occur are related to the “Drugs War”. This in spite of the fact that even the US State Department confirm that slavery is a fact in Burma. Sherwood rests in the knowledge that he has no personal evidence of abuse occurring in Burma, therefore it isn’t happening – a simple act of denial. Look the other way.
The United Nations have reported a million people displaced, untold thousands massacred, tortured and subjected to modern slavery. Amnesty International call Burma “a prison without bars”.
Since John Pilger’s documentary on Burma in the nineties, news coverage has increased from zero. The National League for Democracy have been able to conduct a peaceful democracy rally with the Generals knowing that they are now under scrutiny from the international media. The fact that the rally did not end in slaughter is progress of a kind and was reported.
If my account stopped there, the reader may be forgiven for thinking that the situation has of course improved with time. But if there has been no momentous confrontation of Imperialist behaviour, no enlightenment amongst International Capital that a new approach is required, then why would things have changed? Let’s take a look at the more recent developments in Burma, or Myanmar as the Generals would have it.
The Military Dictatorship continues in Burma, with continued international investment from the US, Russia, China, Britain, France – the whole range of previous Imperial players in the region, only a tiny bit shy about co-investing in Burmese companies wholly owned by the Dictatorship. More concerned by their inability to run business in a coherent and profitable manner, and always tainted by their image abroad as the unacceptable face of capitalism. Meanwhile the Burmese people themselves, starved of any revenue from the exploitation of their resources, decline. By 2014, The United Nations ranks Burma at 147 out of 189 countries in relation to human development – a country that used to be amongst the most educated in the region.
In 2011, in order to soften their image, the Generals dissolve the Military Junta and set up a “civilian” but nevertheless unelected Government, with General Min Aung Hlaing as Leader. This is sufficient for Big Business to start investing in the country led to ruin by the ineptitude of the military dictatorship. But, as always, the Military own and control the Nation’s resources and foreign investment remains, as always, in partnership with the Generals.
In 2014, according to The National Resource Governance Institute who monitor global mineral wealth, $926 billion dollars of Burmese oil revenues are pocketed by the Burmese Military with only $600,000 finding its way back to the Burmese Treasury.
In 2015, the elections was won by Suu Kyi’s NLD. International companies, now openly, move straight back in to set up joint ventures with Burmese companies directly controlled by the Military. A token Democracy is all that is required to set the corporate PR machine rolling. All sorts of corporate sponsored social programmes abound, if not in deed then in word. Empty corporate PR gestures do however serve a a function, that used to be fulfilled by religion, absolving corporations of guilt in their complicity with thugs to remove a nation’s wealth to line their own pockets.
2017. in spite of Suu Kyi’s NLD party being in power, 700,000 moslem Rohingya flee to Bangladesh to avoid a genocidal campaign against them. The genocide is enacted by the Military. Suu Kyi has, in practical terms, zero control over their activity but nevertheless incurs the condemnation of western liberals, along with sanctions. The Military will of course never see themselves as being under the jurisdiction of an elected Government, but that Government can handily take responsibility for the genocide.
2020. February 1st. Following a landslide election victory for the NLD, and as you might be expecting by now, the Military organise a coup and hold Suu Kyi under arrest without trial. They assert without evidence that the election was rigged. Amid imposed curfews and an internet shutdown, the people react by organising national Strikes. Business is disrupted. U.S. express “disappointment” (presumably at the disruption to business) and impose minor sanctions. International capital originating from the US now has more competition from Russia and China and the US will not be too punitive on the military regime if this disrupts big business income. Just enough to show the world that they don’t approve of Dictatorships, but not too much to prevent disruption of income flows from Dictatorships. A fine balance indeed.
An elected Government, with the backing of the people, will eventually find its way back to power in Burma. But it will be many, many years beyond this before they are able to actually claim control of the country’s resources by way of revenues and taxes. This position is the most optimistic outcome that can be expected in the prevailing circumstances of the current world order.
Western democracies should not feel too superior at this point, given how beholden our Ministers are to Big Business Lobbyists and Party Sponsors. The objective is to create Systems and Governments that are genuinely of the people and for the people. Burma will merely head for an improvement where there is less overt brutality and killing and, under the current global system, will arrive at a system similar to ours in the West – a Government of the privileged for the privileged, military uniforms a little more in the background. We are all a long way from a meritocracy, and the objective of this book is to acknowledge the problem and hopefully to consider the action proposed here.