A harsh prison sentence given to a retired university professor for circulating a petition calling for a free election should serve as a wake-up call to those lulled into believing Myanmar's junta is moving toward democratic reform, analysts said Friday.
Salai Tun Than, 74, an ethnic Chin and Christian academic, was sentenced to seven years in jail on March 25 for staging a lone peaceful protest on November 29, 2001, in front of the Yangon City Hall.He was arrested as he tried to distribute copies of a petition letter calling on the Myanmar government to hold a general election in one year and to transfer power to the winners.
"With this sentence, the Burmese government is making it clear that it will crush any and all dissent," said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division. "The harshness of the sentence suggests that, political dialogue notwithstanding, the Rangoon regime is fundamentally unchanged."
The junta seized power in 1988 after crushing pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the country, killing hundreds of civilians and forcing thousands of others into jail or exile.It also changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar and the capital from Rangoon to Yangon.In 1990, it allowed a free election, but when pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory the junta refused to give up power.
"The tough sentence against the professor fits into the pattern of Burmese politics," said Aung Zaw, editor of The Irrawaddy, a Myanmar dissident magazine published in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai."This shows the (Myanmar) government is not flexible," Aung Zaw said in an interview with United Press International. "There's no climate of change. It's just wishful thinking."
Aung Zaw and other Myanmar political analysts said a year and a half of United Nations-backed talks between the junta and the democratic opposition, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, have yielded little in its aim to nudge the country toward democratic reform.
U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail was scheduled to make the latest in a series of visits to Myanmar on March 19 to mediate between the junta and Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, but the visit was postponed until April 22.
"The Razali visit was postponed, and it might be postponed again," Aung Zaw said. "The only reason they're talking to Suu Kyi at all is to buy time, and buy weapons, and to give false hope for reform for the Burmese people." He said the release of political prisoners in recent weeks has also been aimed at giving the false impression that the talks between the junta and the opposition are more than window dressing.
On Friday the junta announced the release of seven more members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, bringing the total number of party members freed in the past 18 months to 244, including 54 members elected to parliament in the voided 1990 election.
Political optimists have also seized upon the recent fall from grace of Myanmar's former dictator, General Ne Win, 92, as a sign that the junta was planning to break with the past and open the way to real democratic reform.Ne Win ruled the country from 1962 to 1988, initiating the so-called "Burmese way to socialism," which wrecked the economy and isolated the government from much of the world.Ne Win's son-in-law, Aye Zaw Win, and three of his grandsons were arrested on March 7 and accused of hatching an elaborate plot to kidnap the junta's top three leaders and install a government of officers loyal to the former strongman.About 100 suspects in the alleged coup plot were detained for questioning and Ne Win himself was put under house arrest along with his daughter, Sandar Win.
But Aung Zaw dismissed the alleged coup plot as merely the resolution of a "business conflict" between the junta and Ne Win's family, which has been involved in several high-profile business ventures since Ne Win was eased out of power in 1988 by the current leadership.
"The fact that the junta dared to touch Ne Win's grandsons shows the government has gained more confidence," Aung Zaw said. "I don't see any rumbles of dissent within the present leadership. They are all hard-liners."
He said the man on whom many optimists for political change pin their hopes, military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, is just as opposed to a transition to democracy as the rest of the hard-line army leadership.Khin Nyunt is just more sophisticated than the others," he said. "Actually, he was behind the violence of 1988. He's committed even more crimes than Ne Win."