General Than Shwe is not widely known as one of the world’s worst dictators. People would likely recognize Omar al-Bashir, Kim Jong Il, or Robert Mugabe before Shwe. But he has earned the distinction.
The statistics since he came to power are staggering: over 70,000 child soldiers (the most in the world), over 3,500 villages burned since 1996, forced portering, and countless cases of land mine victims, rape and torture as the junta’s method of war. Over the summer, Foreign Policy ranked Than Shwe as one of the world’s most oppressive dictators, one slot behind Kim Jong-Il.
So when Than Shwe announced elections for Nov. 7, the first in twenty years, it is no wonder few were optimistic. When the elections happened, the election officials claimed an estimated 80 percent went to the two parties created and backed by the junta, furthering reasons to believe these elections were a show. President Barack Obama called the elections neither fair nor free and even went so far as to say Burma’s junta stole the elections. The State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, characteristically optimistic in the lead up to the elections, said after, “it would be fair to say in almost every area [of the elections] we have been disappointed.”
But what the U.S. has been hoping for was a changed dynamic in the country — a mixing of political fluids to start the engines of democracy that have not been started in years. What has Burma showed the international community? Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and political prisoner in Burma, was set free as promised this past Saturday. This most recent release is her first time out since 2002 (she has been in and out of house arrest 15 of the past 21 years). And, well, that is about it. It will be curious to see how the junta handles her speeches of freedom and democracy in Burma the next few days while it simultaneously tries to keep the country under control.
How should the international community respond? The debates over sanctions aside, the option the Obama administration, activists and human rights groups are calling for now is a UN Commission of Inquiry in Burma. Similar to what happened in Darfur, a Commission of Inquiry would assemble a team of observers to investigate crimes against humanity and possible war crimes in Burma. If the Commission found human rights abuses, Burma’s case would be referred to the International Court for Criminal Justice, which would then begin the process of bringing the junta and its crimes to trial, which would hopefully lead to justice.
Two generations have already been lost in Burma. The transfer of dictatorships ran the fastest-growing economy in Southeast Asia into the ground, and today the steps to democracy and freedom in Burma, as well as economic prosperity, will be steep and take years. What is happening today is history for Burma, and should be ingested with a degree of hope for the future, but with heavy skepticism of the present reality.
Kirk Acevedo Senior, School of International Service
