ChIndia Fiddles While Burma Burns

Aung San Suu Kyi has been confined to house arrest for a good part of the past 18 years. Burma's military junta have made sure that her political voice has no way of reaching her fellow country men or the outside world. Her party, the National League for Democracy, won the general elections quite convincingly in 1990, but the military did not recognize the result. The military stayed on in power and the next seventeen years amounted to what I believe is a brutal rape of democracy. The military junta quelled any talk of democratic elections promptly and brutally. Numerous peaceful activists have been locked up in some of the most notorious prisons in the world. In short, Burma's military regime is a human rights nightmare. Not to mention the foolish economic policies, such as the most recent doubling of fuel prices, that this regime has imposed upon Burma's citizens pushing them deeper and deeper into economic crisis.

So what exactly makes the Burmese military junta so powerful and oblivious to reason? Believe it or not, their power is derived from the two superpowers in the region, China and India, or in short ChIndia. Both of these nations have special interests in Burma's oil and off-shore natural gas reserves. As these two nations became more and more hungry for cheap fuel owing to their booming economies, their relations with the Burmese military junta have only strengthened. China has a terrible record of supporting autocratic regimes purely to satisfy its ravenous hunger for energy resources. Sudan is a case in point. China's energy interests in Sudan have been responsible, at least in part, for prolonging the Darfur humanitarian crisis. So, it would be a mistake to expect any Chinese economic sanctions on Burma, but what ever happened to India?

The world's largest democracy has turned a blind eye to Burma's problems. India's Foreign Minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, has said that while he "hopes" for a peaceful, stable and prosperous Myanmar, India cannot interfere in Burma's internal matters. Really? Why Mr. Mukherjee did India train Tamil Tigers to rebel against the Sri Lankan government in the 1980s? And why did India send the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to subdue the same Tamil tigers when the rebellion got out of control? Mr. Mukherjee and his ilk will not have a good answer, because politics in India are rooted in opportunism.

The US, EU and Japan, have for once acted appropriately, by imposing economic sanctions, travel bans and export embargos on Burma. The problem, though, is that they do not hold the strings to controlling the military junta. China and India do. India cannot honestly claim to be a democracy unless it opens its eyes to Burma's travails and pressures the junta to release the thousands of innocent political prisoners. Even more immediately, India needs to twist the junta's arm into releasing Suu Kyi. She is to Burma what Gandhi is to India and what Mandela is to South Africa. She is a symbol of hope and strength to millions of Burmese. Without her, Burma's democracy movement will be crippled. India has to act now and anything China can contribute will be a bonus.