In Myanmar, Democracy’s Euphoria Losing Its Glow

International New York Times | 4 July 2014

Myanmar police stand guard on a street in Mandalay on Thursday. The city was put under curfew after two people were killed in the latest outbreak of violence. Credit Soe

NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — More than three years after Myanmar’s ruling generals shed their uniforms and propelled the country on an ambitious journey toward democracy, security forces are back on the streets of the former military dictatorship.

A rampage by radical Buddhists in the sprawling city of Mandalay that left two people dead this past week spurred the authorities to declare a nighttime curfew, post hundreds of riot police officers and erect razor wire around the Muslim neighborhoods that were attacked.

The euphoria that greeted the end of five dark decades of military rule is now mitigated not only by regular flare-ups of religious violence but an apparent rolling back of some media freedoms. There is also disappointment over tepid commitments by foreign investors who are encountering high levels of corruption, a dysfunctional bureaucracy and infrastructure that remains among the most primitive in Asia.

Both critics and supporters of the government agree that changes over the past three years have made Myanmar profoundly more open and free than the cloistered, brutally repressive country that it was under military rule.

But whereas two years ago the government was tightly focused on writing a foreign investment law, releasing political prisoners and abolishing censorship, critics say religious politicking is poisoning some of the good will that President Thein Sein, a former general, had when he began the liberalization effort in 2011.

One of the highest-profile proposals of his administration this year is a series of divisive measures to “protect” Buddhism that have drawn outrage from interfaith groups, who say they have created a major detour from the reform process. The proposed laws, which were initiated by the country’s radical Buddhist movement, would restrict religious conversions and require women to obtain permission before marrying outside of their religion.

“Liberalization is over,” said Daw Zin Mar Aung, a woman’s rights activist who has received death threats for her opposition to the bills. “Why would the president submit such radical laws?”

Ms. Zin Mar Aung, who like many civic leaders in the country is a former political prisoner, accuses the government of building a new national identity on the basis of nationalism and Buddhist chauvinism rather than a multicultural democracy.

In another area that was liberalized early on — media freedoms — there appears to be backsliding. In February, journalists were jailed under a British colonial law, the State Secrets Act, for reporting on an alleged chemical weapons facility. In April, a Burmese journalist was sentenced to one year in prison for trespassing and “disturbing a civil servant on duty,” though he was due to be released on Friday after a court reduced his sentence.

Foreign journalists have seen the duration of their visas cut, and a correspondent for Time magazine, Hannah Beech, has been barred from the country after writing an article on the radical Buddhist movement that drew street protests.

David Scott Mathieson, a Myanmar expert with Human Rights Watch, said the police last month “reverted to their old intimidation tactics” when they called in journalists and editors of several publications for questioning. The reason given was concern over potential money laundering “but more obviously it was a subtle form of pressure to curb the confidence of the Burmese media,” Mr. Mathieson said.

Romain Caillaud, the managing director in Myanmar of Vriens & Partners, a consultancy, said he sensed more caution from the military establishment and a belief that “it’s too early to let go of the reins.”

“We were all a bit naïve about how far things could go,” Mr. Caillaud said. “They have done a lot, and they are not that comfortable going much further right now.”

The economic changes pushed by the new government are considered a crucial complement to the political freedoms that have been introduced. For decades, Myanmar’s poverty-stricken economy was largely state-controlled and disconnected from the outside world.

But the welcome mat laid out for foreign investors three years ago has failed to produce the rush of foreign companies that many anticipated. This is evident at Thilawa, an area outside of the country’s largest city, Yangon, that is being developed into an industrial zone.

The blueprints call for a collection of factories, a showcase for the new Myanmar that would employ thousands of workers. But there are still more water buffalo than construction workers in the future industrial zone.

The architects of the reform process — the ex-generals of the former junta — are among the critics of the slow pace of the economic transformation. “I would say our economic reforms have not reached the level we expected,” Thura Shwe Mann, the speaker of the lower house of Parliament and the chairman of the governing party, said in an interview.

A spokesman for President Thein Sein complained in a separate interview that too few investors “are coming with big money.” U Ye Htut, the spokesman, added, “The president’s concern is that economic dividends have failed to reach the grass-roots level.”

The disappointing levels of foreign investment are a blow to the governing party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which was created by the former junta. The party was counting on job creation to help it overcome what many consider the long odds of beating the National League for Democracy, the party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and leader of the opposition. Landmark elections are due to be called late next year.

The honeymoon between Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and the military that jailed her for the better part of two decades now appears to be over as she battles to curtail the military’s political power and change a law that bars her from becoming president. Her standoff with the military is being interpreted as an early sign that the election campaign may be divisive and bitter. The military is “taking rights they do not deserve,” she told a crowd of supporters in the provincial city of Taunggu last month.

Despite the three years of a nominally civilian government, the military’s privileges and economic clout have remained largely intact.

Through two opaque holding companies, the military has large stakes in everything from the country’s largest beer maker to a copper mine operated jointly with a Chinese arms and explosives manufacturer. “They own everything: land, companies, export licenses,” said U Win Htein, a former officer who is now an opposition member of Parliament. “You name it, they have it.”

Almost without exception, the top posts in Myanmar’s government today are held by former military officers.

“It really seems like a military government in civilian clothing,” said Sean Turnell, one of the leading experts on the Burmese economy.

Yet at a time of failed and blood- stained democratic revolutions in the Middle East, some say the military’s continued engagement in politics in Myanmar ensures a measure of stability.

“This is a top-down, managed transition,” said Richard Horsey, a former United Nations official and one of the country’s leading political analysts. “It’s part of the reason why it may be more sustainable and successful than, say, the Arab Spring.”

Mr. Shwe Mann, the speaker of the house and formerly the third-ranking general in the junta, said in the interview that the military “should gradually hand over its responsibilities” but did not give a timetable.

Under the previous military dictatorship the junta was seen as monolithic. Under the new system, former generals like Mr. Shwe Mann are competing for votes. There are fears that the election campaign will further exacerbate religious tensions, especially if the governing party tries to harness the popularity of the radical Buddhist movement.

This bodes ill for neighborhoods like Yadanabunmi in Mandalay, where the attacks took place this week.

U Nyi Nyi, a Muslim tea shop owner, said Muslims had very little trust in the police, which is overwhelmingly staffed by Buddhist personnel, after they failed to stop massacres of Muslims in Meikthila and other towns and cities over the past two years.

After the violence in his neighborhood this week, police seized sticks and swords from Muslim houses. But they did not disarm the crowd of Buddhist attackers, Mr. Nyi Nyi said.

“How will we protect ourselves if we are attacked?” he asked.