Crackdown expanded to email, cellphones
The Toronto Star, September 29, 2007
SONYA FATAH
NEW DELHI–For years, India supported the pro-democracy movement in neighbouring Burma.
Burmese students found safe passage into and through India and were given scholarships to attend university here.
Its leaders in exile had friends in high places. But 10 years ago, a change in policy changed ties.
Partnerships with the Burmese military, geopolitical agendas and stakes in the region for India’s big and upcoming businesses have shifted India’s allegiances away from those advocating democracy for its military-run neighbour.
A few protests and demonstrations outside the Burmese embassy and India’s parliament aren’t getting much attention from India’s government or media.
But pro-democracy activists, who believe India’s support for Burma’s ruling military junta is betraying the memory of former leader and peace icon Mahatma Gandhi, say the Indian public still supports their struggle.
This week, the Indian government finally commented on the junta’s violent suppression of monk-led anti-government protests, calling for political reform but at the same time suggesting it was an internal Burmese problem.
Moreover, high-level Indian officials were in Burma, also known as Myanmar, this week discussing bilateral relations, suggesting India’s friendship with the generals isn’t on the wane.
“India has a big economic stake in Burma …,” says Tapan Bose, secretary general of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights.
“The petroleum minister has run off to Myanmar. That would indicate that we are certainly quite deeply involved.”
India’s close relations with pro-democracy leaders started to change in the early 1990s as China’s influence in the region began to surge. India began to look for regional partnerships to boost its own influence.
The new policy was called “engagement with the regime.”
“This was part of India’s `Look East’ policy, and it was meant to increase border trade, exchange of visitors, and military aid,” says Tint Swe, a member of the parliament in the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma.
G. Parthasarathy, India’s ambassador to Burma between 1992 and 1995, says security fears helped shape India’s new policy.
“The prospect of the Chinese getting facilities in the Bay of Bengal and along our border became a matter of security concern.”
India was also fighting a serious and growing insurgency in four states along its 1,600-kilometre northeastern border and wanted Burma’s help keeping the lid on.
Today, business ties provide much of the glue bonding the two nations. Last year, India’s trade surplus with Burma reached $400 million.
Oil, a rich and mostly untapped resource in Burma, is fuelling a new Indo-Sino rivalry as China plans a pipeline in Burma and is leading the race to sign a contract for natural gas from a soon-to-be-developed offshore field in Sittwe, in the Arakan region.
India wants the gas to help develop its troublesome northeastern region and Burmese democracy isn’t needed for that, as witnessed by India’s visit to sign offshore agreements last week.
Critics say that India’s cozying up is not only a betrayal of former friends in the pro-democracy movement, it’s also a futile effort to catch up with China.
Several months ago, Burma sold gas from two fields to China, shutting out Indian firms who had a 30 per cent stake in the deal.
“India is too far behind,” says Swe. “Mandalay is overrun by the Chinese. There is a lot of Chinese influence in Burma. And the military is just playing the Indians and the Chinese against each other.”
If India has little to gain from Burmese democracy, China has even less so.
“China’s main concern would be that democratic change is infectious, and calls for change could spread into neighbouring Chinese territory,” says Parthasarathy, the former ambassador.
“Unless they have a change in policy, we aren’t going to. So no, nothing will change now.”
Still, the flame of support for democracy in Burma hasn’t been completely doused in India.
Veteran MP Nirmala Deshpande, who leads a forum of Indian parliamentarians for democracy in Burma, says she has collected a million signatures in support of the cause.
“The movement that is being carrying out in Burma is a non-violent movement. It is the duty of all Gandhians to support this movement.”
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