Josef Silverstein, a Myanmar expert and retired professor of Rutgers University in New Jersey, noted the junta's decision to clamp down on the organizers has failed to spark anything more than a routine condemnation from the United Nations and foreign governments. (Source: International Herald Tribune| Asia-Pacific)
Analysts say fuel protests in Myanmar no immediate threat to junta
The Associated PressPublished: August 26, 2007
BANGKOK, Thailand: A week of protests over fuel price hikes present no immediate threat to Myanmar's military rulers because very few people joined the demonstrations and the key organizers were swiftly detained, analysts said Sunday.
Enraged by the doubling of fuel prices earlier this month, activists launched a series of rare street demonstrations in the country's largest city, Yangon, starting Aug. 19. The military responded by detaining at least 65 activists, including leaders of pro-democracy groups the 88 Generation Students and the Myanmar Development Committee.
Crowds cheered on the demonstrators, but few joined in. Attendance at the marches ranged from a few dozen hardened activists to a few hundred, and were mainly limited to Yangon.
"Although the public probably is behind the relatively few demonstrators in the streets, I do not think that now the people as a whole are ready in any major way to risk their lives," David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University in Washington, said in an e-mail interview with The Associated Press.
"The chances are that small demonstrations may continue for a bit, but major ones are unlikely," Steinberg said. "By allowing small demonstrations, the military may be trying to fend off larger ones."
The military has arrested the key activists "who might make things worse for them," he said.
Yangon was quiet Sunday, with pro-junta supporters and plainclothes police deployed throughout the city to prevent further protests.
In neighboring Thailand, about 90 people protested outside the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok demanding the junta revoke the fuel price hike and end the violent crackdown on activists.
Josef Silverstein, a Myanmar expert and retired professor of Rutgers University in New Jersey, noted the junta's decision to clamp down on the organizers has failed to spark anything more than a routine condemnation from the United Nations and foreign governments.
"No outside country or individual outsider is coming to the aid of the people, not the U.S., the ASEAN states or even soldiers of fortune," Silverstein said in an e-mail interview.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, is a member of ASEAN, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has a rigid policy of noninterference in members' domestic affairs.
"Burma is willing and able to see off or give away at bargain prices the natural resources, oil, gas, timber ... at the expense of the nation and its people," Silverstein said.
Since liberalizing its investment code in 1988, Myanmar has signed a number of energy deals with its neighbors including China, India, South Korea and Thailand. Desperate for energy to fuel their growing economies, the countries have ignored Myanmar's dire human rights record to secure lucrative oil and natural gas contracts.
Activists say the fuel price increase was probably needed to remedy a cash shortage after the government spent heavily relocating its capital 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Yangon to Naypyidaw in 2005.
Aung Zaw, the editor of Irrawaddy, an independent newsmagazine based in Thailand that reports on Myanmar-related issues, said in an article the price hike may have been an attempt to make fuel distribution more profitable, paving the way for its ultimate privatization.
But the move may also have been a result of internal conflicts within the junta, he said. Disgruntled low-level army officers, hoping that the unrest would impede the approval of a long-awaited constitution, could have been trying to embarrass military ruler Gen. Than Shwe.
It could also have been a means of trapping activists by provoking their anger, he said.
Already one of the poorest countries in Asia, Myanmar's government has exposed the public to increasing hardship in the form of rising bus fares, and brought to mind the mass demonstrations in 1988.
But hundreds of thousands filled the streets in 1988 to protest economic hardship and to demand an end to the military rule that began in 1962.
The army violently subdued the protests, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. The junta held a general election in 1990, but refused to honor the results when the National League for Democracy — led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi who remains under house arrest — won in a landslide.
"The present demonstrations are important, but nothing like the scale of 1988," Steinberg said.
Myanmar's ruling junta has been widely criticized for human rights violations. It tolerates little public dissent, sometimes sentencing activists to long jail terms for violating broadly defined security laws.
National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma
http://www.ncgub.net/article.php/20070826101754120