The Burmese generals must be dreaming of
the "good old days" when they could stop any news getting out of their country,
while they kept a firm grip on the situation. Now they have blocked the
Internet in the vain hope of stopping news getting out as they proceed to
arrest and shoot unarmed civilians. But their attempt is in vain. They cannot
stop the world from seeing what is going on. The latest we have is that they
have killed ten people in the last couple of days.
What must be worrying them in particular
is the determination of the demonstrators in the face of brutal repression.
Last night’s reports were that the shootings far from curbing the will to
protest has actually strengthened the movement. We have seen scenes of ordinary
civilians facing up to the soldiers, daring them to shoot on their own people.
In one Yangon neighbourhood hundreds of protesters ignored the
government’s ban on demonstrations and took to the streets again.
The regime has organised a systematic
operation of rounding up the most militant of the monks, raiding their
monasteries and taking many away. With this they hope to remove the focal point
of the protest. The question of the monks, however, is an embarrassing one for
the military tops. There are about 500,000 of them. The tradition is that many
families will send one of their sons to be trained as a monk. Therefore the
protesting monks we have seen on our TV screens will have direct family links
with millions of ordinary Burmese people. Hounding them, beating many and
arresting them could have the opposite effect to what the obtuse military
chiefs may imagine.
However, although the present wave of repression is shocking to people all
over the world reading the reports and watching the scenes on TV, compared to
the past it seems the Burmese military are holding back from launching an
all-out bloodbath as they did back in 1988. The reason is clear: if they are
seen killing large numbers of monks, who are greatly revered in the country,
this would enrage the populace even more and lead to a protest that could sweep
away the regime.
Imperialism has a problem with this regime. The army chiefs belong to a
period when they had full control over the situation. For many years they had
managed to shut the country off from outside influence. But years of economic
decay have eaten away at the regime from within. It is a body that is rotten to
the core and only the outer shell remains.
As we explained in yesterday’s article, a section of the officer caste is
more prone to opening up to the opposition. They can see that if they do not
loosen up to some degree then the whole edifice could come crumbling down, and
if the military is involved in widespread killings in the coming period, the
anger of the population could reach such levels that they would lose not just
their military and political positions but also access to the material wealth
they have accumulated over years. It is this gut instinct that is guiding them.
One wing sees that any concession to "democracy" will be the end for them;
another wing sees that if they don’t make concessions then they will lose
everything anyway.
That may explain why a United Nations’ special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim
Gambari, is now travelling to the country, apparently without any obstacle
being put in his path by the regime. In the past this would have been
unthinkable. It is clear they want to leave a channel open for negotiations. An
outside "mediator" could open the road to bringing the opposition on board.
This they see as the only way of stopping the present wave of protest.
China is being called to play a major role in defusing the situation.
Normally China prefers to stick to its policy of not interfering in the
"internal affairs" of a country when such events take place. The Chinese regime
brutally dealt with the Tienanmen protests nearly 20 years ago and at the time
stuck to the position that other countries shouldn’t meddle in their domestic
affairs. But this policy cannot hold any longer.
China now has big investments in Myanmar and wants guarantees that those
investments are safe. It is also Myanmar’s biggest trading partner. As many
commentators have explained the Chinese regime is not concerned about
"democracy". How can it be, when there is no such "democracy" in China? What
they are concerned about is stabilising the Burmese regime. China also
has its internal problems, with growing social polarisation and widespread
discontent. They fear that the masses in China at some point in the future
could draw some lessons from the present situation in Myanmar.
In the recent period the Burmese regime had been going through the motions
of drawing up a democratic constitution, but the text was written in such a way
as to leave the main levers of power still in the hands of the military. China
had been pressurising the regime to speed up this process. Their idea was
clearly to loosen up somewhat from the top in order to avoid an explosion of
discontent from below. The military have left it a bit late, and as soon as
they announced their stringent economic measures in August the whole situation
imploded.
Jiang Yu, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson announced yesterday that,
"China hopes that all parties in Myanmar exercise restraint and properly
handle the current issue so as to ensure the situation there does not escalate
and get complicated."
In the next few days we can therefore expect diplomatic pressure on the
regime to increase. It would not be surprising to discover that discreet lines
of communication are being built between elements within the army officer caste
and the opposition, brokered by western diplomats. This would not be in
contradiction with an escalation of repression over the next few days. The
increased violence on the part of the regime could enrage the masses to such a
degree that a wing of the military could be forced to open up negotiations in
order to calm the situation down.
However long it takes, the end result will be a movement in the direction of
some kind of bourgeois democratic regime. The Chinese regime would clearly have
preferred to avoid such a scenario, as this would loosen their grip on the
country. The USA and other western powers are pushing for the opposition to
come to power. As we said yesterday, this does not represent in any way a
greater love for democracy. It is merely a means of increasing the spheres of
influence of this or that imperialist power.
This explains the widespread publicity being given to the movement in Burma.
So far the biggest rally we have seen has been between 70,000 and 100,000,
depending on which reports one reads. This is an impressive movement. No one
can have any doubt about the courage of the demonstrators in the face of a
brutal military apparatus. But if we consider that the population of Burma is
around 50 million, it is still rather small compared to movements we have seen
in other parts of the world.
We should recall that in Mexico at one stage during the protest movement
against electoral fraud last year, there were three million people on the
streets of Mexico City. The movement had a mass participation that lasted for
months. But what kind of media coverage did that movement get? The official
media did not offer us scenes of the rallies in Mexico City. On the contrary,
they played the whole movement down. Organs such as The Economist and Financial
Times, which are now talking of "revolution" in Burma, denied such a
movement was taking place in Mexico.
Why the difference? It is very clear! In Burma the outcome of this movement
will be to bring to power a bourgeois opposition that is already closely linked
to imperialism. In Mexico imperialism was backing Calderon and feared the
masses that were rallying behind Lopez Obrador. In Burma, imperialism wants to
see this regime brought down so that a government they can "do business" with
can be brought to power. In Mexico the politician they can "do business" with
is the man who led the blatant electoral fraud.
We see how imperialism has two weights and two measures when it comes to
using terms such as "revolution" and "democracy". For imperialism "democracy"
means the untrammelled rule of capital. Any hint at genuine mass, workers’
participation in the political affairs of a country is seen as "dictatorial".
We see this in the way they define the Venezuelan government.
Therefore, while we support the aspirations of the courageous Burmese masses
in their protest and in their attempt to bring down this brutal military
regime, we also maintain a sense of proportion and do not close our eyes to the
manoeuvres of imperialism. And although the dominant idea in people’s minds is
that the opposition is working for democracy and the downfall of dictatorship,
we know that there is more to it than that!
See also:
The tragedy of Myanmar by Fred Weston (September 27, 2007)
