Actually, it was a bitter disappointment. Since the spring, the government has released more than 350 members of the opposition National League for Democracy party–as well as scores of prisoners from other groups. Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi has been granted permission to travel within the nation’s borders and has reopened more than 65 NLD offices. But opponents of the regime say that these concessions are beginning to look like little more than window dressing: Suu Kyi has reported no progress in talks about expanding democracy in Burma, and repression in the countryside is as bad as ever. “If it just goes on and on, I may decide to step down,” Razali told a Malaysian journalist two weeks ago.
It’s obvious why the regime may be stalling. Per capita income, reported months ago to be about $300, is in free fall. The price of rice, the staple of the Burmese diet, has tripled outside Rangoon, according to the NLD. The United Nations says that one in 50 Burmese adults is infected with HIV, one of the highest rates in the world. The government had hoped that its concessions would relieve the country’s international isolation and draw desperately needed foreign aid and investment.
Rather than follow through with real reforms, though, the generals have tried simply to put their limited moves in the best possible light. In May, just after Suu Kyi’s release, the regime signed a one-year deal with DCI Associates, a Washington lobbying and public-relations firm. Exile groups say DCI’s efforts landed Burma’s drug czar an invitation to high-level meetings with Bush administration officials in July. In Rangoon the regime has been doing some lobbying of its own. It has hosted a parade of U.N. dignitaries, downplaying human-rights abuses and pumping them with pleas for greater humanitarian aid even while continuing to crack down on critics for offenses as small as possessing exile publications.
That approach has worked, to a degree. The regime recently inked two trade pacts at the annual meeting between members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and economic giants Japan and China. And more and more foreign-aid groups say politics should be set aside in order to get help to long-suffering Burmese. “It is by no means certain that attempts to work with the government to avoid a health disaster will succeed,” Robert Templer of the International Crisis Group wrote recently. “[But] what is certain is that the country cannot stem the tide without immediate, substantial and sustained financial and technical support.”
The problem, say NLD activists, is that without continued international pressure, the group may end up as a relatively toothless social organization, allowing the government to relieve pressure at the grass-roots level without giving up any power at the top. Some Burma watchers fault Razali for his naivete in dealing with the traditionally intransigent generals. “Razali miscalculated,” says a Bangkok-based Burma watcher. “He believed the [regime’s] assurances. He took for granted that they mean what they say. The generals served him a trayful of platitudes, and he ate it up.”
The NLD is struggling to make the best of a bad situation. On a recent Tuesday at the party’s tiny headquarters in Rangoon, indigent mothers and infants gathered for the weekly health screening–and not least for the free lunch. Two women carefully set out Burmese-language HIV/AIDS pamphlets. A box of generic condoms remained discreetly closed, but easily available. The crowd is a welcome change from the situation of just a year ago, when the office operated with a skeleton staff in the absence of its leader. And Suu Kyi’s low-key barnstorming trips to Mandalay, Karen state and, most recently, northeastern Shan state–where rights groups have documented systematic rapes by the Army–have begun to re-energize activists outside the capital. But NLD brass are frustrated with how fragile even this limited freedom remains. A circumspect Suu Kyi refuses interviews when she passes through the headquarters. “If we make one mistake, this will be the finish,” explains U Lwin, the party’s 78-year-old spokesman. Even if they don’t, though, the regime still doesn’t seem ready for a new beginning.
