Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) calls for Burmese government, parliamentarians and all the people to work the utmost possible to achieve peace reality in Kachin Land

14 May 2012

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) call for Burmese military to stop offensive against Kachin troops who are fighting for equal rights for Kachin people.

Especially, we would like to press here that Burmese President U Thein Sein had called for halting offensive in Kachin state but we are very sad to learn that there are increase fighting between Burmese military and Kachin army even after his presidential order.

We are very much concerned that as the results civilians; especially children, women and elderly are paying the price dearly. These disadvantaged people fleeing from the fighting between two armies are facing very difficult hardships. We would like to call for international community to take every action possible helping these IDPs who desperately need food, shelter and medicine.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) is very sad to learn that there is no sign of reaching peace agreement yet between Kachin Independence Army and Burmese Army but, for the sake of the people and for the sake of the peace in Burma, we would like to call for all parties concerned to work finding peaceful solution by settling differences through dialogue.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) understands that KIO has requested the Burmese army to honour previous ceasefire agreement by repositioning troops i.e. to withdraw Burmese troops from areas close to Kachin administrative capital Laiza and Headquarter Pa Jau.

According to the Kachinland News http://kachinlandnews.com “Burmese Army prepares to launch a major offensive against Kachin’s administrative capital Laiza. Burmese soldiers from various Battalions took a stronghold in preparation of a major assault on Kachin headquarters including transporting heavy artilleries to front lines. Burmese Army transported food rations and military equipment to its post at Pajau hill by using helicopters as well as Burmese Army’s Bureau of Air Defence got 3 fighter jets ready at Nampong Air Force Base in Myitkyina for upcoming assault on KIA”.

These actions are contrary to the agreements of “Ruili’s meetings” which agreed to reduce the scale of hostilities leading towards attaining mutual understanding. But, the actions taken by Burmese army not only increase the hostility but also proofing that how Burmese generals are ignorant of suffering of the people of Kachin.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) wholeheartedly supports KIO’s legitimate demands and we would like to call for Burmese government to honour the KIO’s request in order to build confidence between two parties.

It is really contrary that President U Thein Sein is speaking reform and Burmese generals are waging war against KIA to eliminate their very existence.

Burmese Government must stop attacking Kachin people and if they are willing to do it -- then there will always be the ways to get there. We must take action in Kachin state now before too late.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) truly believes that dialogue is the only viable solution to achieve the peace in Kachinland, Burma.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) would like to take this opportunity to express our position that we believe in dialogue and we believe in harmony in diversity. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) believes in respecting peaceful co-existing between people with different ideas, beliefs, language, religion and customs.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) calls for Burmese government, parliamentarians and all the people to work the utmost possible to achieve peace reality in Kachin land and in the whole Burma.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) calls for the Burmese government and Burma Army to:

·        stop reinforcing its troops and military hardware to conflict areas

·        stop their offensive assault against KIA

·        withdraw its troops from areas close to Kachin administrative capital Laiza and Headquarter Pa Jau

·        withdraw its troops to the line agreed on in a 1994 ceasefire agreement to show that its peace initiatives are sincere and genuine

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) earnestly calls for Burmese government and Burma Army to honour above legitimate demands of the KIA/KNO.

We truly believe that Burmese government and Burma Army got more responsibility to show that they are committed to peace in Kachinland.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) truly believes that by honouring above demands, Burmese government can proof by action that they are truly committed to reform and to restore peace in Burma.

Honouring above demands are the must to build trust between two fighting armies leading towards ceasefire and eventually achieving peace reality in Burma.

Japan's revolving-door immigration policy hard-wired to fail

By DEBITO ARUDOU

Last December, the Japanese government announced that a new visa regime with a "points system" would be introduced this spring.

It is designed to attract 2,000 non-Japanese (NJ) with a "high degree of capability" (kōdo jinzai), meaning people with high salaries, impeccable educational and vocational pedigrees, specialized technical knowledge and excellent managerial/administrative skills.

Those lucky foreign millionaire Ph.Ds beating a path to this land of opportunity would get preferential visa treatment: five-year visas, fast-tracking to permanent residency, work status for spouses — even visas to bring their parents and "hired housekeepers" along.

Sweet. But then comes the fine print: You must get 70 points on the Justice Ministry's qualifying scale (see www.moj.go.jp/content/000083223.pdf) And it's tough, really tough. Take the test and see if you qualify (I don't). Symptomatic of decisions by committee, it's a salad of idealized preferences without regard for real-world application. There's even a funny sliding scale where you get more points the longer you've worked, yet fewer points the older you get.

Interesting is how low Japanese language ability is weighted: only 10 points — in a "bonus" category. One would have assumed that people communicative in Japan's lingua franca would be highly prized (especially when the call for kōdo jinzai is in Japanese only).

However, I would argue the opposite: Crowds of NJ completely fluent in Japanese are exactly what the government does not want. Visa regimes with illiterate foreigners facing insurmountable hurdles are what maintain Japan's revolving-door labor market.

For example, consider 2008's visa program to import elderly-care nurses from the Philippines and Indonesia.

These NJ were all qualified nurses in their own countries, so their only real obstacle was the Japanese language. Yet this visa program required that they pass the same nursing exam that native speakers sit. Within a time limit of three years. Otherwise they lose their visas and get sent home.

This, coupled with a full-time job (of humiliating unskilled labor, including bathing patients and setting tables) and insufficient institutional support for learning kanji, ensured they would fail. And they did: The Yomiuri (Jan. 5) reported that 95 percent of the Indonesians tested over the past three years did not pass — and more than half (even one of those who did pass) have gone home. Future applications have since dried up.

This begs the question: If learning written Japanese was so important, why didn't the government hire nurses from kanji-literate China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan? Because, I guess, that would be too easy, and we'd get hordes of skilled Chinese. Undeterred by policy failure, the country being asked next for nurses is — drum roll, please — Vietnam.

Now consider another regime: 1990s nikkei South Americans' special "repatriation" visas.

The nikkei were invited to come to this country based on the assumption that somehow their Japanese blood would make them more assimilable (see Just Be Cause, April 7, 2009). Wrong. So, after nearly two decades of working full-time keeping Japan's export industries price-competitive, the nikkei were told after 2008's economic downturn that they were no longer employable. Because of — you guessed it — their lack of Japanese ability.

The government offered only 1 percent of the nikkei any retraining, and the rest for a limited time only a free plane ride home (forfeiting their unemployment insurance and pension claims, natch).

Out they went. Over the past three years, the Brazilian population alone has dropped more than 8 percent per annum, and it's accelerating. They will probably dip below the fourth-place minority (Filipinos) next year.

Now triangulate this with concurrent "trainee" and "researcher" visa regimes, bringing in even cheaper (sometimes slave-labor) NJ from all the other less-developed countries. Applicants were once again lured with false promises of "training" or "research," only to be given unskilled labor like cleaning pig sties or pounding sheet metal. And, once again, their visas only lasted one to three years. Back home they mostly went.

I think we can safely say that Japan's working-visa regimes (including, if you think about it, even the JET Programme) are deliberately designed to discourage most NJ from ever settling here. Given this context, let's now consider this new "points system."

While I am in favor of having an objective and reviewable program (for a change) for granting visas, it is still no substitute for a real immigration policy. All of Japan's visas are temporary migration policies; this new one just aims for a rich elite with a housekeeping entourage.

Not to worry: It will fail to bring in any significant numbers of foreigners. By design. For in this era of unprecedented levels of international migration, think about the incentives available to all governments to use exclusivity as a weapon.

Here's what I mean: One of the prerogatives of a sovereign nation-state is the ability to make laws about who is a "member" of its society (i.e., a citizen) and who isn't (i.e., a foreigner).

Axiomatic is that citizens have full rights and foreigners have fewer, meaning that the latter is in a weakened position in society.

This is how countries exploit people: Give them visas that don't let them get too settled, because foreigners who stay indefinitely might put down roots, agitate for more rights as contributors to society, even — shudder — take out citizenship and expect to be treated like citizens.

So Japan's visa regimes use criteria that practically guarantee foreigners stay disenfranchised — such as low language ability. After all, an unassimilated foreign populace without the means to communicate their needs remains the perpetual "other." Then you can siphon off their best working years, send them home with a simple visa nonrenewal, and never have to pay back their social contributions and investments.

But if a nation-state can set boundaries on membership, it must also set criteria for how people can surmount those boundaries and graduate into becoming members — in this case, making foreigners into Japanese citizens.

If it doesn't, it becomes clear that the goal is to deliberately create a weakened subset of the labor force that can be politically disenfranchised and permanently exploited. This can go on for generations, as the zainichi Koreans and Chinese might attest.

However, for Japan these visa scams are no longer sustainable. Demographically, Japan needs more laborers to pay its taxes, work its factories and service sectors, and support its aging society. It needs measures to make Japan open enough to get people to stay — like, for instance, a law against racial discrimination, protecting residents regardless of nationality from prejudice and inequality. But no.

Still, it really doesn't matter now, because the jig is up. With decades of economic stagnation and now falling incomes, people are staying away from Japan. After an unbroken rise for 48 years, the registered NJ population in 2011 dropped for the third consecutive year.

International labor is bypassing Japan for other rich countries — those with more accommodating labor practices, more open import/export markets, a more internationally useful language to learn, and a less irradiated food chain.

Japan has the option to believe that immigrants do not belong in Japan's future. On the other hand, potential immigrants have the option to watch from afar as Japan withers into an economic backwater. Again, by design.

 

Discussions on this issue can be found at debito.org/?p=9848 and debito.org/?p=9809. Debito Arudou's latest book is "In Appropriate" (www.debito.org/inappropriate.html) Twitter arudoudebito. Just Be Cause appears on the first Community Page of the month. Send your comments to community@japantimes.co.jp

Europe must listen closely to refugees

Report calls on EU leaders to heed the concerns of refugees more closely

(Brussels, 01 August 2011) – The Jesuit Refugee Service Europe urges EU leaders and concerned citizens to listen more closely to refugees, in their annual report published today. The report covers JRS activities in 10 EU countries, in addition to Ukraine, Morocco and the Western Balkans region.

Over the last year JRS has endeavoured to get refugees’ voices heard by EU decision-makers and the broader public. Many are cut-off from society, shut away in detention centres or left to live homeless on the streets of European cities. The broader public’s unawareness of the injustices refugees face leaves their politicians with little incentive to push for rights-based policies.

“Refugees have been stripped of their humanity in the current European debate on asylum and refugee policy,” says Fr Luigi Romano, JRS Europe assistant director.

“They have been turned into units, mere statistics reflected on paper.”

“The fact is that refugees are human persons, with needs and aspirations that are utterly genuine. Asylum and refugee policies in Europe can only improve if decision-makers and the broader public listen closely to what refugees have to say.”

Catalin Albu of JRS Romania (left) with refugees resettled from Kachin state in northern Burma (© Don Doll SJ)

The report offers country profiles that show how JRS national offices responded to refugees’ most pressing concerns in 2010. In Belgium, JRS visited over 600 persons in five detention centres, and in Germany JRS used legal aid to free almost 63 percent of persons in its caseload from wrongful detention. JRS Italy served meals to 350 people each week, and in Romania JRS housed 80 rejected asylum seekers who were living destitute.

During 2010 JRS Europe published two major studies. The first, based on interviews with 700 detained migrants, shows how detention leads to the systematic deterioration of individual physical and mental health – severe depression and anxiety, insomnia, appetite loss – even after just one month. The second, also based on migrants’ testimonies, reveals how state policies force migrants into destitution, leaving them without any safety net and no access to their fundamental rights.

“Refugees are not without a voice, and they certainly have something to say about policies that affect their day-to-day lives,” says Fr Romano.

On several occasions JRS brought refugees to European policymakers so they could explain their plight in person. Hassan Muhumet Saleban, an Eritrean refugee living in Malta, described to MEPs the harrowing boat journey he undertook from Libya to the European continent.

“It is death to go back home, and death to go to Europe,” said Mr Saleban, who endured several months in Libya’s medieval detention centres, and over one year in a Maltese detention centre.

“The willingness of refugees to share their lives is a testament to their innate humanity, their desire to be listened to and to have their protection needs seriously addressed," said Fr Romano.

"Listening to refugees is not only the humane thing to do, but it also leads to the development of good refugee policy.”

DOWNLOAD THE 2010 JRS EUROPE ANNUAL REPORT

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Philip Amaral, Policy and Communications Officer

JRS Europe

Tel: +32 2 250 32 23; Mobile: +32 485 173 766;  europe.advocacy@jrs.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; www.jrseurope.org

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Hardliners sulk as Suu Kyi shines

Much is riding on the outcome of the forthcoming polls in Myanmar, and more particularly the way in which these by-elections are conducted.

The initial signs are not encouraging. The election is going to be a real test of strength between the liberals who support the president's reform agenda, and the hardliners grouped around Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo, who seem intent on derailing the reform process, despite publicly declaring their support for democratic reform.


Campaigning for the forthcoming elections is already in full swing. Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is contesting a seat in the parliamentary polls scheduled for April 1, has already made several forays into the countryside, including touring parts of the constituency on the outskirts of Yangon in which she is running.


Tens of thousands of supporters and well-wishers have flocked her route on these occasions to glimpse the iconic figure, who has spent much of the last 20 years under house arrest, often in virtual solidary confinement. Everywhere her reception has been the same, adoring crowds yelling their support for her. "She's been treated like a pop star," said freelance journalist Min Thu, who has been following her entourage. "The excitement is overwhelming as people want to see her, wave to her, and for those close enough, to touch her."


Although only a relatively small proportion of seats is being contested in the by-elections _ to replace MPs who have taken up ministerial posts _ the results will have a significant effect on the country's fragile reform process.


"Aung San Suu Kyi's decision to run for parliament is an extremely important move for the future of the country," said Sean Turnell, a Myanmar specialist at Macquarie University in Australia who recently visited the country. "She is uniquely placed to drive reform forward and bring on board a substantial constituency to help maintain that momentum." The leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) is contesting from Kawhmu, a poor rural district on the southern outskirts of Yangon, the country's largest city and the Nobel Peace laureate's hometown.


Her party is fielding candidates in almost all the 48 seats that are vacant _ 40 in the lower house, six in the upper chamber and two in provisional assemblies. While this represents less than 15% of the seats in the national assembly _ 440 seats in the lower house and 224 in the upper house _ the results are less important than the way in which these by-elections are conducted.


"We hope the government keeps its word and allows a free and fair election," said NLD spokesman Nyan Win.


The world's eyes are now on these by-elections, something the Myanmar government is painfully aware of.


US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton stressed the need for these by-elections to be free and fair when she met government leaders last December in the new capital Nay Pyi Dtaw. She promised the speaker of the lower house, Shwe Mann, that this was a chance for Washington to seriously consider reducing sanctions against the country.


Since then the mantra has been constantly repeated _ including by United Nations human rights envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana on his mission last month, and last week by the German development minister and a European Commissioner: that any consideration of rolling back sanctions was dependent on the by-elections being free and fair.


There is no doubt that the liberals in the government want these elections to be as free and fair as possible _ it is essential for their long-term game plan. President Thein Sein and house speaker Shwe Mann met with the chairman of the election commissioner Tin Aye a few months ago _ before Mrs Suu Kyi and the NLD agreed to contest _ and agreed that the by-elections would be free and fair, even if it meant the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) would take a severe drubbing in the polls.


"We have taken the necessary measures so that the upcoming by-elections will be free, fair and credible," Shwe Mann told EU development commissioner Andris Piebalgs earlier this week. This is nevertheless going to be difficult, because it is the USDP leaders, who are mainly hardliners, who will be campaigning in the election, even though Shwe Mann is nominally the head of the party.
So far the signs are ominous and there is growing evidence that the hardliners are trying to scupper the NLD's campaign. Some senior USDP leaders have instructed government officials to block the NLD's electoral campaign in any way they can. This was already evident a few weeks ago when Mrs Suu Kyi wanted to speak to her supporters in Mandalay. The EC gave her permission to speak but the party was refused approval to use the main stadium there to address the rally.


The signs that this is going to be a dirty campaign were even evident before her first trip to the Dawei industrial zone area in southern Myanmar. In a clear preview of things to come, the former fisheries minister and USDP central executive member, Maung Maung Thein, warned residents in the area last month that if they did not vote for the USDP they would lose their jobs.


More ominously though, he instructed the local officials to make sure they manipulated the vote in same way that the November polls were rigged, senior military sources disclosed.


Maung Maung Thein has considerable business interests in the area (especially in the fishing industry), and he has also been accused of colossal corruption.


All along the main road in Mrs Suu Kyi's constituency are big colourful billboards proclaiming to voters that the roads were being repaired by the USDP. In many places throughout the country the USDP is taking credit for infrastructure projects, medical centres and schools built by the government. This may not sway voters from electing Mrs Suu Kyi, but may have greater influence in other parts of the country.


The pro-democracy leader is not anxious to cry foul, at least just yet. "We have certainly come across a few hitches in the last couple of weeks with regards the campaign of the NLD," she told reporters recently. "We hope that these will be sorted out because free and fair elections depend on how a campaign goes, not just how people are allowed to cast their vote on the day itself."


"The problem is access to resources, and when so much is at stake there will be setbacks," said Aung Naing Oo, a former activist and now development specialist who has just returned to Myanmar for the first time in 20 years. "There will always obstacles to democratic change in the short term, especially the danger of vote-buying," he said.


The problem is that at the local level government officials' allegiances will be to the local mafia and cronies. And they are likely to be swayed by the local party bosses, rather than the president's edicts.
Even if the NLD wins most of the seats it is contesting, it will be a minority party in parliament. More than 70% of the seats are already held by the pro-military MPs who belong to the USDP, including a quarter of the MPs who are serving soldiers directly nominated by the army chief.


"Even if she is the leader of a minority party in parliament, Aung San Suu Kyi will be a potent symbol for national reconciliation and democratic change," said Nyo Myint, a political analyst.

---

Larry Jagan is a former BBC regional correspondent based in Bangkok who extensively covers Myanmar issues.

Suu Kyi's choice

Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has chosen a non-violent political path for pragmatic reasons [EPA]

Oxford, United Kingdom - In the second of her 2011 Reith Lectures broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Aung San Suu Kyi made an extremely interesting remark about her own politics. She said: "I was attracted to the way of non-violence, but not on moral grounds, as some believe. Only on practical, political grounds."

Ever since Suu Kyi shot to fame as the face of the struggle for democracy against a brutally repressive military regime in Myanmar, she has been seen globally as an embodiment of Gandhian principles of non-violence.

Suu Kyi was not a public figure until she was caught up in the democracy movement while visiting her ailing mother in 1988. Her instant name recognition and political status in then-Burma was due to her being the daughter of Aung San, the leader of the Burmese independence movement, revered in Myanmar. But few remarked on the irony that "General" Aung San, as he was known, had chosen the path of armed struggle against the British, and then the Japanese.

Had his daughter accepted his political mantle, but rejected the political philosophy of her father?
For some time now, her long, brave and extraordinarily graceful struggle against the Burmese junta has earned Suu Kyi her own global iconic status. Indeed, to many around the world, Aung San today is known more as Suu Kyi's father than the other way around. As a result there has not been much discussion of the choices Aung San made earlier, and how relevant they might be for Suu Kyi's political struggle many years later.

In her Reith lecture, Suu Kyi referred to the political legacy she had inherited: "In one of the first public speeches I made in 1988, I suggested that we were launching out on our second struggle for independence. The first, in the middle of the last century, had brought us freedom from colonial rule. The second, we hope, would bring us freedom from military dictatorship."

However, it was clear that she was an independent thinker who had no qualms forging a different path in different times. "We could draw inspiration from the triumphs of our forebears", she said, "but we could not confine ourselves to our own history in the quest for ideas and tactics that could aid our own struggle. We had to go beyond our own colonial experience."

Looking for "ideas and inspiration", Suu Kyi and her colleagues turned to the experience of the Indian independence movement, and found their answer in Gandhi's non-violent civil resistance. Her father, Aung San, and his fellow political activists had also looked to India for ideas and inspiration. They had come to entirely different conclusions.

Different inspirations

Contacts between the Burmese and Indian nationalist movements developed in the final decades of the British Empire. There was a substantial Indian population in Burma at the time, and the British also used Burma as a place to incarcerate troublesome Indian nationalists. (Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the nationalist leader from Maharashtra, had been imprisoned in Burma from 1908 to 1914. Another such political prisoner was Subhas Chandra Bose, who was held without trial in Mandalay and Insein prisons for nearly two years between 1925 and 1927.)

In "Subhas Chandra Bose and the Burmese Freedom Movement", the Czech scholar Jan Becka wrote about the early connections between the Burmese and Indian freedom movements. In Mandalay, Bose met Burmese political prisoners and came to know Burma well. These contacts were later followed up by Burmese nationalists.

In the 1930s, the Burmese nationalist party Dobama Asiayone, led by the Thakins, began to send delegates to the annual gathering of the Indian National Congress. Aung San became a prominent leader of this movement. The Thakins were influenced by leftist political ideology and connected well with the left wing of the Congress, to which Bose belonged.

Bose's more radical alternative to Gandhism, expounded as president of the Indian National Congress in 1938 and 1939 and later as leader of the Forward Bloc, was popular with the Thakins, in particular after the disappointments of the constitutional movements of the thirties. As Becka put it:

The negative attitude of Britain towards Burmese national aspirations and the unwillingness of the British ruling circles to commit themselves to any statement on future political status of Burma however made most Thakins, nationalists as well as leftists, oppose the policy of supporting the British war effort and led them to agree with Subhas Bose that the freedom movements in both the countries should make the fullest use of the involvement of Britain in the World War for their own common goal, ie, attainment of national independence.

In October 1939, the Burma Freedom Bloc was founded as a united anti-imperialist front, with Ba Maw, the former head of the limited colonial government, as president and Aung San as secretary-general. Some say even the name was inspired by Subhas Bose's Forward Bloc in India, founded as a radical group within the Indian National Congress.

Shared goals

The two blocs shared the goals of complete independence from Britain and a future society based on socialism, as also the wartime strategy that Britain's difficulty was their opportunity. Bose and Aung San met when the Thakins went to India to attend the 1940 Ramgarh session of the Indian National Congress. As US historian Peter Fay remarked in his The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945, the political lives of these two leaders, who were so completely different in terms of social background and temperament, seemed to run along parallel lines from then on.
The British hit back strongly against the more radical political movements in India and Burma. Bose was arrested in 1940, while Aung San narrowly escaped arrest. In Becka's view, Forward Bloc and Freedom Bloc virtually ceased to exist. Aung San made his way to Japan. "He saw no profit in waiting to be jailed again. 'The time has come to strike,' he wrote later."

He and a group of Burmese nationalist volunteers received military training from the Japanese and returned -  the "Thirty Heroes" - to command the Burma Independence Army (BIA) in Thailand [Joyce Lebra, Jungle Alliance]. When Gandhi began the "Quit India" movement in August 1942, the Burma Independence Army was fighting openly against the British on the Japanese side. Japan granted Burma nominal independence in 1943, as Ba Maw became the premier and head of state and General Aung San became defence minister.

Subhas Bose also did not want to wait out the war in jail. He went on hunger strike to get out of prison and then escaped from house arrest in January 1941.

After a largely abortive bid to fight for India's independence with German help, he arrived in Southeast Asia in 1943, after an extraordinary submarine journey from Kiel in northern Germany, around the Cape of Good Hope, transferring from the German to a Japanese submarine off Madagascar, to land in Sabang on the Sumatran coast.

He formed the Indian National Army (INA) with Japanese help, was welcomed back to Burma by his Burmese nationalist colleagues - and the INA and BIA fought side by side against the British on the Burma front.

Neither Bose nor Aung San lived to see the independence for which they fought; Bose was killed in an air crash in August 1945, and Aung San was assassinated in July 1947.

Diverging strategies

By 1944, the Indian and Burmese nationalist fighters faced different situations in Burma. While there were cordial relations between the Azad Hind (Free India) government and the Burmese nationalist government, two elements started to diverge in terms of their strategic position.

First, while there was initial popular enthusiasm for the defeat of British colonialists by the Japanese forces and the establishment of independent Burma, the oppressive conduct of the Japanese military towards the Burmese fuelled antagonism against the Japanese. Second, after the failure of the Imphal campaign, the tide of the war turned against the Japanese and in favour of the British. Aung San decided to change sides.

In August 1944, a Burmese front named the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL) was formed, and, in March 1945, Aung San and the Burmese national army turned around and started to fight the Japanese. In His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle Against Empire, Sugata Bose writes: "Now that the fortunes in the war had changed, Aung San turned against the Japanese and offered his assistance to Viscount Slim. The Burmese resistance was being conducted on Burmese soil. The arrogance of the Japanese had not endeared them to their Burmese allies."
However, it did not make sense for the Indians, whose objective was to end British rule in India, to switch sides. At least not yet.

An extraordinary sub-alliance

In this precarious situation, the Burmese and Indian nationalists appear to have pulled off a rather extraordinary sub-alliance while using one imperialist power against the other for their own specific objectives. According to Bose: "The Indians reached an understanding with the Burmese not to fight against each other." Becka wrote that Subhas Bose, as Supreme Commander of the INA, rejected Japanese orders to put down the Burmese revolt - but he also did not join the AFPFL, and that a majority of the INA in Burma retained a neutral stance. On the ground, Indian nationalist commanders reported that "BIA rebels remained friendly towards the INA even after they turned against the Japanese". [Lebra, Jungle Alliance]

After the war, in 1946, Aung San warmly received Sarat Chandra Bose, the barrister and Indian nationalist - also Subhas Bose's elder brother - in Rangoon (now Yangon). The US historian Leonard Gordon wrote in Brothers Against the Raj: "Aung San mentioned the common cause of the Boses and himself of opposing British imperialism and promised Sarat Bose his cooperation. In fact, Aung San helped in the dismissal of the cases against the Indian civilians."

Fay gives an amusing account of Aung San's meeting with Slim in May 1945. Aung San's "Japanese uniform of a Major-General, complete with sword" startled some of the officers, and he demanded the status of an allied, not subordinate, commander.

Most British considered Aung San and the Burmese nationalists who had joined the Japanese "traitors" - a curious label they pinned on anyone in their own colonies, including the Indians, who were fighting for liberation from British rule.

However, Aung San charmed Slim: "His intelligence, however, his excellent English, his good humor, above all the frankness of his manner, quite captivated Slim."

Fay reports the following exchange from Slim's account:

Slim: "Go on, Aung San. You only come to us because you see we are winning!"
Aung San: "It wouldn't be much good coming to you if you weren't."

As Fay correctly points out in his note on sources: "Few can beat the British at the writing of military memoirs. What they may lose on the battlefield they will more than recover at the book stall."

Grounded in history

One of the effects of this sort of history writing, not just from the point of view of victors, but also from the perspective of the larger, imperialist powers, is that the concerns and alliances of the many other groups caught up in the war become lost or obscured. Aung San's position and objectives were related to Burma, and Burmese history.

In her Reith Lecture, Suu Kyi also explained her own choices in terms of her country's history. Her "practical, political" choice of non-violence, she said, was "not quite the same as the ambiguous or pragmatic or mixed approaches to non-violence that have been attributed to Gandhi's satyagraha or Martin Luther King's civil rights. It is simply based on my conviction that we need to put an end to the tradition of regime change through violence, a tradition which has become the running sore of Burmese politics".

Of the Burmese who had fled to Thailand and taken up arms against the junta, Suu Kyi said:

I have never condemned and shall never condemn the path they chose, because there had been ample cause for them to conclude the only way out of repressive rule was that of armed resistance. However, I myself rejected that path because I do not believe that it would lead to where I would wish my nation to go.

Those who chose armed struggle have not been able to dislodge the military rulers of Myanmar; neither has Suu Kyi through non-violent civil resistance. Ultimately, while Aung San and Aung San Suu Kyi appeared to make very different political choices, perhaps they were not as far apart as it might seem at first glance.

As Suu Kyi prepares to re-enter parliamentary politics in Myanmar within the limitations currently on offer, it might be worth remembering that, like her father, she is a political realist grounded in the nation's history, and that they both made their decisions, not on moral grounds, but on "practical, political grounds".

This article was published on the 115th anniversary of the birth of Indian revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose.

Sarmila Bose is Senior Research Associate, Centre for International Studies, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. She was a journalist in India for many years. She earned her degrees at Bryn Mawr College (History) and Harvard University (MPA and PhD in Political Economy and Government). She is also the grandniece of Subhas Chandra Bose.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

This is NOW Time that International Community MUST remove TOURISM, TRADE and INVESTMENT Sanction on Burma

18 January 2012

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) warmly welcomes the release of hundreds of political prisoners. According to the list of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD network inside Burma who are supporting prisoners and visiting prisons around the country -- the numbers are approximately nearest well documented by NLD that there are 591 political prisoners in Burma. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) welcomes the decision of the government to release the political prisoners according to the lists of NLD and we call for U Thein Sein regime to release all the rest of the political prisoners in accord with the NLD’s list of political prisoners.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) also welcomes US Government decision to normalise diplomatic relation in response to Burma Government’s positive steps taken. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) encourages international community to engage more with Burma in order to balance China’s influence over Burma. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) truly believes that more engagement would effectively promote political, civil, democratic and economic freedom in Burma.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has already invited investment and tourism in Burma. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) would like to echo our leader’s call for investment and tourism in Burma. Please do invest in Burma and please do visit Burma. Burma is facing challenges ahead which we must address sensibly, wisely and realistically for her quest for democracy. Burma must resolve poverty, corruptions, poor technology, and lack of expertise, poor banking, unemployment and inflation and fiscal and monetary policies.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) calls for investment in Burma which will significantly boost the welfare of the Burmese people. By removing investment and trade sanction on Burma, Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) truly believes that Burmese citizens will have the benefits of increased investment which can bring technology, knowledge and democratic values since outside investment strengthens private institutions. At the same time, Burma must work hard to end the economics monopoly and cronyism in Burma. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) welcomes tourists visiting Burma so as to promote ordinary Burmese people engaging with people from around the world.

Burma needs technology and financial assistance from international community to help rebuilding the nation after five decades of isolation and economics mismanagement. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) is very concerned that due to the sanction imposed on Burma as the subsequence crucial international aid are stopped delivering in Burma. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) calls for international community to provide more humanitarian assistance and development aid inside Burma and since in the past most of the US government's aid programme went to organisations based in Thailand. If there are obstacles blocking aids going inside Burma then we must remove them immediately since we don’t want to hurt the livelihood of the ordinary people of Burma whom are suffering from reputation risk. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) opposes anything hurting people.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) is very sad to learn that Burma receives less foreign aid money than any country in Southeast Asia because of the sanction imposed on Burma. For example, in 2009-10 Burma receives only $US7.2 per capita of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) while neighbouring Laos received $US64.4. Particularly international community must remove all sanctions that block technical assistance in health and social welfare. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) is very shocked to learn that restrictions imposed by western countries prohibit assistance from reaching any member of the government because of which prohibit providing any assistance such as even providing training to teachers and health workers.

In particular, Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) calls for more assistance and international investment in education, social and health care in Burma. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) truly believes that Burmese people will be very happy if International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) could help tackling poverty in Burma since Burma needs financial and technological assistance from international community so as to address the immediate needs of the people and in the process of rebuilding Burma.

Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) truly believes that Burma is on the right track for democratic change. In order to help reliving the suffering of the people of Burma, we must have common position amongst all parties concerned by putting national interest first. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) calls for international community to remove TOURISM, TRADE and INVESTMENT sanction on Burma in order to alleviate suffering of Burmese people who are suffering from REPUTATION RISK and to encourage Burmese government’s reform process which had already started.

For more information please contact Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) at

U Myo Thein [United Kingdom]
Director, Burma Democratic Concern (BDC)
Phone: 00-44-208-493-9137, 00-44-787- 788-2386

U Khin Maung Win [United States]
Director, Burma Democratic Concern (BDC)
Phone: 001-941-961-2622

Daw Khin Aye Aye Mar [United States]
Patron, Burma Democratic Concern (BDC)
Phone: 001 509-783-7223

U Tint Swe Thiha [United States]
Patron, Burma Democratic Concern (BDC)
Phone: 001-509-582-3261, 001-509-591-8459