No one under the age of 38 – half the population in Burma – had ever voted before the latest rigged poll by the ruling military junta. That estimation from Amnesty, and the fact that voters were denied the chance to vote for the main opposition party, is testimony to the scale of the task of democratising a country that has become an iconic global symbol of the struggle between free speech and military diktat.
The release of Aung San Suu Kyi from the house arrest to which she has been subjected for 15 of the last 21 years is a great victory for her personally and for the millions of supporters worldwide who have maintained pressure on the generals. But, as Suu Kyi herself has said, it is important to see the release in the context of the wider struggle ahead.
Her release was a victory, but a partial one. It was also a calculated action on the part of a regime which wants to unburden itself of the single most powerful symbol of its repression. Suu Kyi’s freedom, such as it is given the perpetual threat of re-arrest if she crosses an invisible line of dissent, changes the game plan and presents difficult tactical dilemmas for her party and supporters.
Burma’s hard road to democracy will not be complete until it is led by someone freely and fairly elected without military intervention. The only person currently holding a rightful claim on that role is Aung San Suu Kyi.
Her first words were characteristically peaceful, conciliatory and firm. Calling for a peaceful revolution she nevertheless spoke of the need to begin a dialogue with the generals in a search for national reconciliation and hinted at a need for a change in the policies of Western countries currently imposing sanctions – which appear to hit the Burmese people rather than the generals or the flattened economy.
However, there is very little, if any, evidence of a regime which holds more than 2,000 other political prisoners, is responsible for murderous ethnic cleansing campaigns and stages sham elections, moving towards wider democratic reform. On the contrary, the generals want to bask in the backglow of their Big Gesture and hope that the world will pay less attention now that Suu Kyi is free, while governments and banks line up with aid and investment.
In spite of the patchwork and invidiously unfair effect of sanctions – by Canada, the European Union including Britain, the United States and others – any easing of them could be seen as a reward and the abandonment of hope for those other political prisoners.
Yet how, if Suu Kyi’s message is that the Burmese people will have to work with, rather than against the government, is any move to democracy to be measured without a commitment to free elections and respect for the result? It is unrealistic to expect such a dedicatedly brutal regime to give up
power quietly. Now is not the time to ease the pressure.
Suu Kyi may be free, for now. Her country is still a long way from liberty.
