In the dark tunnel of dictatorship in Burma, there is still light for democracy if recent history is any guide, a prominent Southeast Asia historian told Burmese activists and their international supporters yesterday as they commemorated the violent crackdown of the pro-democracy movement in Rangoon 17 years ago.
Professor Thongchai Winichakul of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, cited the dismantling of the Suharto regime in Indonesia in 1998, as a consequence of the Asian economic crisis a year earlier, as a recent example of an abrupt end to absolute power in the region.
“Even a year prior to 1998, the end of Suharto was unthinkable, even to Indonesian analysts who were most familiar with the regime,” Thongchai said. “They all thought Suharto would die on his throne and pass power on to his protege.”
The end of Suharto entailed a major overhaul of history concerning the 1965 civil war on the archipelago in which more than 500,000 people were killed by the state.
Thongchai said Burmese democracy fighters could expect the same – an overhaul of history to do justice to their 3,000 comrades who fell during the uprising on August 8, 1988.
“Indonesia waited 33 years for an accurate history to be written, so we could say 17 years for Burma is not too long yet,” Thongchai said.
At the same event, leading human-rights lawyer Somchai Homla-or criticised Burma’s draft charter as a “joke” as it was below international democratic standards and would not create reconciliation in the country.
“Constitutions of the rest of the world today begin with the people’s ‘view of rights’ whereas the Burmese started from state power,” Somchai said.
“The power still rests with the military junta. It is a joke that the charter that took more than 10 years to write mainly turns out to be something designed to exclude just one person [Aung San Suu Kyi] from power.”