President Biden and his Western allies are likely to use sanctions to punish the arrest of civilian officials in Myanmar, where a transition to democracy degenerated into ethnic cleansing and now an apparent coup.
“When Burma, or Myanmar, was under the military rule, it was basically on the blacklist; there were a lot of sanctions against Burma,” a European Union official said. “And the EU will not hesitate, if necessary, to reimpose the sanctions because this is undemocratic. This goes against all the principles we believe in.”
Myanmar Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s arrest of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate once regarded as the Burmese answer to Nelson Mandela, has diminished the hope that restrained Western condemnations of the flawed government. The massacre of Rohingya Muslim minorities in recent years has stained Suu Kyi’s reputation as a humanitarian icon, but U.S. and Western officials sought to nurture the country’s democratic prospects; now, the military chief’s move against civilian leaders has simplified that consensus.
“There are no good guys,” the EU official said, acknowledging the degree to which European leaders have soured on the Suu Kyi. “But still, the civilian government and situation in a society which tries to complete the transition towards at least [a] partially democratic society and civilian-run society is much better than the alternative of having a junta military regime in power.”
Idaho Sen. James Risch, the top Republican on the committee, offered a similar sentiment. “This is a giant step in the wrong direction for Myanmar and the freedom and prosperity of its people,” he said in a statement released Monday. “The United States stands with the people of Myanmar, is prepared to explore options to impose costs on those who threaten democracy, and will work with those partners seeking peace, economic reform, and genuine democracy in Myanmar.”
The crisis in Naypyitaw, the capital city, appears likely to generate a unified front between political powers in Washington as well as between the U.S. and European allies. Biden moved quickly to remind military leaders that the U.S. “removed sanctions on Burma over the past decade based on progress toward democracy” — a Sunday night sanctions threat sharpened by his insistence on referring to the country as Burma. (The military regime jettisoned that name in 1989, one year after consolidating power in a coup.)
“Our official policy is that we say ‘Burma’ but use ‘Myanmar’ as a courtesy in certain communications,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, acknowledging that Biden made no such gesture in his response. “Certainly, he is watching this closely, as is evidenced by his statement.”
The new crisis has spurred Western observers to blame for the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslims, as State Department officials have termed the violence, on the putative schizophrenia of the politics in Naypyitaw.
“In 2015, Burma’s democratic elections brought Aung San Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy party to office — but not truly to power,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The military has continued to maintain its corrupt, corrosive hold on the economy, thwart constitutional and political reform, and perpetuate terrible conflicts with ethnic minorities that remain an obstacle to peace and democracy.”
McConnell’s statement might go too far in absolving Suu Kyi of responsibility for the violence against the Rohingya, in the eyes of other officials and human rights activists. Amnesty International, which honored the once-imprisoned dissident with its Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2009, withdrew the prize in 2018 due to “her apparent indifference to atrocities committed by the Myanmar military.”
“She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her defense of democracy and her efforts to sacrifice, in many profound ways,” Amnesty International USA National Advocacy Director Joanne Lin said. “People, including people inside Amnesty, had expected that that would extend to protection of human rights for the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Myanmar, and that clearly did not come to pass.”
That said, there is a widespread perception that she lacked the power to prevent the butchery.
“If you go deeper and understand more the internal dynamics and the competing centers of power, you would maybe understand,” the EU source said. “Of course, it’s not justifiable that … the official representatives of the state allowed this to happen — because, again, it’s a genocide, or it borders on genocide, and it’s unacceptable.”
That line of analysis suggests that Suu Kyi squandered her own moral authority in a doomed bid to forestall the return of the military regime.
“She bears some responsibility for” failing to defend the Rohingya Muslims, the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center Director Walter Lohman said. “Now, she’s at the point where she’s lost anyway, and she never spoke up.”
Her arrest may free U.S. officials from continuing an analogous mistake after years of internal deliberations about how to condemn the Myanmar military’s slaughter of Rohingya Muslims without undercutting the democracy activists or increasing Chinese Communist influence in the country.
“All we do is compromise the broader strategic advantage we have in our value system and that sort of thing, without getting anything back for it,” Lohman said. “And to me, the coup just proves that. What did we get for it? We’ve been doing this for 10 years, and now we’re back to square one.”
