Somewhere in imponderable nirvana, the Buddha may be exhibiting the faintest
of smiles. Or is he? What a heavenly sight - the discreet, barefooted,
crimson- and maroon-clad Buddhist monks of Myanmar, formerly Burma, able to
affirm publicly their supreme moral authority and righteousness, supported
by an exhausted, abused population, against the ravages of a pitiless,
pitiful, 45-year-old military junta.
But the Buddha, whose infinite wisdom also includes knowledge about energy
wars, would say that as everything is impermanent, the crackdown will come.
The question is how.
Few can fail to be intensely moved by the exhilarating images of the
“crimson revolution” - thousands of monks chanting “democracy, democracy” or
reciting the *Metta Sutta* - the Buddha sermon on loving kindness, while
civilian demonstrators, on a practical level, also call for the release of
hundreds of political prisoners and a reduction in the price of fuel (raised
500% last month, the root cause of the protests).
The Asian Human Rights Commission has reported how the monks, in a pre-rally
ceremony on Monday, have solemnly refused to accept donations from anyone
junta-connected, people they have dubbed “pitiless soldier kings”. This very
serious act amounts to nothing less than a Buddhist form of excommunication.
But fear now looms. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy icon
Aung San Suu Kyi - lovingly referred to all over the country as The Lady -
has been transferred from her lakeside home on University Avenue in Yangon
to sinister Insein prison, according to a Reuters report. The junta has
imposed a dusk-till-dawn curfew in Yangon and Mandalay.
Anti-riot troops in full battle gear now surround the six biggest
monasteries in Yangon. Monks run the risk of at least being attacked with
tear gas - some reports indicate this has already happened. Internet access
(there’s only one state-owned provider) has been cut off. Activists - and
even some monks - have been arrested. During the 1988 protest
movement -
Myanmar’s predecessor of China’s Tiananmen - the regime is said to have
killed more than 3,000 unarmed people.
Bush’s Burmese day
The mystery of why US President George W Bush took center stage at the
United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday but did not promote
the next neo-con war on Iran was solved when it became evident that the job
has fallen to his new European poodle, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who
in his speech once again assumed the inevitability of an Iranian nuclear
bomb.
Bush instead announced new economic sanctions against the junta in Myanmar
and urged the world to apply "diplomatic leverage to help the Burmese people
regain their freedom“. Here is Bush engaging in another”liberation from
tyranny and violence", this time in Asia, while trying to start yet another
war, as usual, in the Middle East.
The connection is clear: the Bush conception of “human rights” means "oil
and gas“. Bush also claimed at the UN that Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq had”asked for our help". Given the precedents, even the isolated people in
Myanmar should be afraid, very afraid.
Myanmar has been in effect off the radar of the international community for
years. Why this new, sudden, Bush administration interest in regime change
in Myanmar? If the US and the West are so obsessed with “human rights”, why
not put pressure on the ghastly practices of the House of Saud? Or the
barely disguised repression under the glitz in Persian Gulf petromonarchies?
Or the bloody Islam Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan?
A vast drug-money-laundering operation, plus full Asian cooperation - to the
tune of billions of dollars - helped the Myanmar junta to build its new
capital, Naypyidaw, in the middle of the jungle, almost 350 kilometers north
of Yangon, in essence using slave labor. The 10-country Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, has been very
lenient, to say the least, with the unsavory generals, in the name of a
policy of “non-interference”. Thailand - for complex historical reasons -
would rather co-exist with a weak neighbor. India coddles the generals to
get natural-gas deals - like a recent agreement to invest US$150 million in
gas exploitation in the west of the country.
Enter the dragon
But Myanmar is above all a key strategic pawn for China. Not only as a
captive market for civilian goods in addition to weapons, but as a pawn to
keep India in check and assure China of key strategic access to the Indian
Ocean. Just like Britain - which twice invaded Burma, as Myanmar was known
until 1989 - China’s utmost interest is natural resources. Oil and gas, of
course, but also gems and timber: the once-pristine forests at the
Myanmar-China border have been practically wiped out. According to the
rights group Global Witness, Myanmar exported no less than $350 million in
timber to China in 2005 alone, and the bulk of it was illegal.
According to EarthRights International, a crucial project of Chinese
multinationals established in Myanmar has been the construction of a
2,380-kilometer oil-and-gas pipeline from the Arakan coast to Yunnan
province in China. China needs this pipeline and a vital port in Myanmar for
its growing energy imports from the Middle East, Africa and Venezuela.
Myanmar and China are also intimately linked by a $1.5 billion, high-tech
electronic-warfare pet project of the junta’s leader, psychological-warfare
specialist General Than Shwe, 74, very much appreciated in Beijing. It deals
with surveillance of ethnic-minority guerrillas in Myanmar - the Karen, the
Chan, the Wa, among others. It deals with surveillance of strategic
competitor India. And it deals with surveillance of all naval traffic in the
Indian Ocean, US warships included, not to mention the crucial Strait of
Malacca. Precious information on the matter can be found in Australian
Desmond Ball’s book *Burma’s Military Secrets *(White Lotus Press, Bangkok).
US sanctions are just for internal American consumption; they will have
absolutely no impact. For starters, Myanmar is not under a military embargo.
A really different story, for instance, would be the Bush administration
telling the Chinese to drop the junta, otherwise no US athletes will be seen
at the Beijing Summer Olympics next year. London bookies wouldn’t even start
a bet on it. The French for their part now say they fear a terrible
crackdown - but in fact they fear what happens to substantial oil business
by French energy giant Total. The European Union should have a unified
position, but for the moment that is hazier than sunrise at the sublime
Shwedagon Pagoda in the heart of Yangon.
Sleepless in Beijing
This year China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the
junta’s human-rights record. It’s virtually impossible that the collective
leadership in Beijing will let one of its neighbors, a key pawn in the
21st-century energy wars, be swamped by non-violent Buddhists and
pro-democracy students - as this would constitute a daring precedent for the
aspirations of Tibetans, the Uighurs in Xinjiang and, most of all, Falungong
militants all over China, the embryo of a true rainbow-revolution push
defying the monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party.
So this seems to be the trillion-yuan question: Will Chinese President Hu
Jintao sanction a Tiananmen remix - with Buddhist subtitles - less than one
year before the Olympics that will signal to the whole world the renewed
power and glory of the Middle Kingdom? If only the Buddha would contemplate
direct intervention.