Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (23 page)

In general, truth and reconciliation commissions invite victims to tell their stories and give a personal account of abuse. Truth thereby serves as a proxy for justice, and challenges previous rulers’ impunity. In the prototypical South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a novel element was that qualified amnesty became part of the process, with perpetrators required to meet key conditions such as exposing the political objectives of gross human rights violations. The Amnesty Committee could investigate, call and cross-examine witnesses to determine whether those conditions had been met. In effect, the commission gave transgressors a second chance in exchange for truth. The process is not without critics. In general, though, it is widely held to have helped overcome apartheid by creating a more reconciled society and facilitating democratization.
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Indeed, the South African model quickly became a template for truth commissions in other countries also authorized to grant amnesty for certain types of offense.
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The key advantage of qualified amnesty is the basis it establishes for reconciliation and reconstruction of civic ties with former oppressors. On a public platform, transgressors are given the chance to reveal their capacity for moral development.
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Discontinuity thereby runs through the hearts of individuals no longer portrayed as inhuman.
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Qualified amnesty can thereby provide the opportunity of a fresh start for all, and in this regard is a suitable option for dialogue and negotiation. It can generate a break with the past, as revelation of concealed truth signals a shift in values from the old dictatorship to the new democracy, and accountability mechanisms enable a society to assign responsibility for human rights violations. It is also feasible in terms of time and cost. In four years, the South African Amnesty Committee processed more than 7,000 applications, with nearly 2,000 going through public hearings.
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Moreover, although apartheid was declared a crime against humanity, the South African amnesty process has not been contested in international courts. Rather, the spread of commissions styled on it signifies a tacit global consensus, which becomes explicit when truth commissions complement prosecutions.
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The major disadvantage of qualified amnesty is little different from that of amnesty itself: violation of victims’ rights to justice. Nevertheless, even they may benefit from reparation programs leading to individual and social empowerment.

Lustration systems come in four basic models: exclusive, inclusive, reconciliatory and mixed. All aim to create a trustworthy and impartial public service and security apparatus. The exclusive system removes officials above a certain rank in the former regime. It was applied in Albania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. The inclusive system focuses on the secret police and allows complicit individuals to retain a public position provided that their hidden activities are revealed. It was applied in Hungary and Romania and partly designed for the former Yugoslavia. The reconciliatory system builds on the principle of a second chance found in the inclusive system to allow for continued public service in exchange for truth about the past. It presents officials with a dilemma: either they come clean and retain their position, or they dissemble and risk exclusion. It was applied in Poland.
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The mixed system fuses elements of the three other types, but draws mainly on the exclusive system. It may lead to discretionary exclusion, or apply a more nuanced approach taking account of personal considerations such as motive, responsibility and skills. Alternatively, it may simply grant exceptions from a general exclusionary rule. It was applied in postwar and post-communist Germany, and by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

By and large, lustration systems are useful in processing a substantial case load within a short period of time without undermining democratization. While they are sometimes said to be tools for redistributing power in times of transition, that is not always the case. Similarly, though they have been cast as truth revelation procedures, this is not necessarily so.
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Within the broad set of lustration models, exclusive variants are often seen as illiberal, “a collective witch-hunt rather than the pursuit of individual responsibility,” since they deliver guilt and punishment by category.
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Chiefly for this reason, they do not have broad support, and inclusive and reconciliatory systems are the major options. For countries without extensive spy networks on the
Stasi
model, the reconciliatory system is key, performing a similar function to truth and reconciliation commissions by floating qualified amnesty in exchange for truth within a larger transitional setting.

The general consensus is that truth commissions and lustration systems are only very imperfect responses to the demands of transitional justice. Cohen argues that “Each strategy, whether justice, restitution, expiation, or reconciliation, assumes that truth-telling has to take place first.”
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Yet observers note how hard it is to gain secure knowledge of the past, and raise searching questions about whether truth is actually told in truth commissions.
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Striking a balance between justice and expediency is also fraught with difficulty, and will always be open to challenge. From a review of South American experience in the early 1990s, Margaret Popkin and Naomi Roht-Arriaza thus conclude that truth commissions can never be more than a second-best option. They often possess limited powers, may remove serious human rights abuse from the legal sphere, and may generate unrealistic expectations. However, they still find that truth commissions do a reasonable job of compiling an authoritative record, and play a part in establishing accountability and promoting reconciliation.
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In general, then, analysts tend to argue for a strong dose of realism. As Huyse put it, “if the balance of forces at the time of the transition makes a negotiated mildness inevitable, a truth-telling operation with full exposure of the crimes of the former regime is the least unsatisfactory solution.”
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In Myanmar, it is possible that negotiated mildness will be on the political agenda at some point in the future, for much opposition discourse points in that direction. If this were to happen, comparative experience could then be explored. One option would be to adopt an integrated approach using elements from truth and reconciliation commissions and reconciliatory lustration systems.
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The standard grand bargain could apply: qualified amnesty in exchange for truth. Supplementing it, every official could be required to submit a public affidavit detailing involvement in past human rights abuse through circumstance, nature, chain of command, and so on. A prosecutor could then inspect affidavits, testimony and archival documentation, and refer suspect cases for cross-examination in a public forum. Individuals found to have told the truth would be allowed to retain their official positions, regardless of violations. Individuals found to have lied would be dismissed, charged with perjury and prosecuted. In this way, the affidavit would serve as a loyalty test. The dishonest would be removed and punished. The truthful would publicly disavow their prior loyalties and subscribe to the transition. Every official would thus be offered a second chance, regardless of previous involvement. Whether to take that chance would be a personal choice. Furthermore, the transformative potential of the process could dispel much criticism and foster consensus about moving on from the preceding regime. Transgressors’ confessions and revelation of a change of heart would enable people to develop a better understanding of the past. Truth combined with the switch of loyalty would facilitate a normative shift toward a new democratic order.

Among officials, the offer of qualified amnesty in exchange for truth is unlikely to be uniformly enticing. On a constructive note, however, it could be used to create an incentive for members of a military machine fearful of prosecution to embrace change. Indeed, such an approach could help to reveal divisions within the
tatmadaw
and enable hidden or suppressed reformist factions to speak out. In South Africa, Joe Slovo’s proposals for shared government, a sunset clause for bureaucrats, and qualified amnesty were carefully calibrated to buy off three key sectors: leading politicians in the ruling National Party, civil servants, and security personnel.
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By and large, they succeeded. A moderate version of the South African process could replace a credible threat of prosecution for past crimes with a threat of legal sanction for present dishonesty. The focus on the present and future rather than on the past would permit individuals to come forward without fearing their revelations might later be used against them in a court of law. Positive incentives would thereby be offered to officials wishing to retain public posts, while others would be allowed simply to leave the state sector.

For members of the wider society keen not to see qualified amnesty watered down, the confessional nature of the process and the repudiation of military governance would generate an important element of discontinuity. Indeed, the sight of hitherto feared members of the military machine testifying about involvement in repression could play an important role in persuading ordinary citizens that things really had changed, that notorious practices like forced labor were a thing of the past, and that a minimal decency now defined their society.
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By the same token, every new revelation and punishment meted out to untruthful officials could eventually persuade the public that reform was genuine and irreversible. Here would be found a necessary
quid pro quo
for amnesty provisions. Additionally, the dialogue and deliberation embedded in this process could go a long way to entrench principles that are fundamental to any meaningful notion of sustainable democratization.
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For sure there would be implementation problems. Crucially, a break with authoritarianism may never take place, rendering the entire issue of transitional justice moot. Beyond that, political polarization could make it impossible to launch the process. Allocating sufficient material and human resources would also be difficult. At a deep social level, a pervasive legacy of fear could undermine the enterprise. However, providing a second chance in exchange for truth is consistent with the country’s dominant Buddhist culture of compassion, forbearance and unconditional forgiveness, and features in similar guises in other religious traditions. This spiritual congruence, allied with a generalized desire to move on from long years of discipline and terror, could dispel many doubts.

5

Inattention and involvement

The crushing of Burma’s democracy movement in 1988 and the installation of a formal military junta ensured that the country slowly came to the attention of the wider world as a candidate for external action. Indeed, the stark contrast between revolution in many parts of the globe and reaction in this corner of Southeast Asia ultimately played a key role in establishing its international notoriety. Instead of assuming an apparently rightful place as a transitional polity, Myanmar was left out in the cold alongside post-Tiananmen China and a clutch of other renegade states. Being a lot smaller, a lot less strategic and a lot less astutely managed than the People’s Republic, it has stayed there ever since. This chapter opens analysis of external responses to the Myanmar problem by examining policies adopted by outsiders over the past quarter-century. The first section provides an overview of debate. The second looks at engagement strategies associated mainly with Asian states and a range of humanitarian organizations. The third evaluates efforts to sanction and isolate Myanmar undertaken by states in the broad western camp and prominent activist groups in global civil society. The final section analyzes the degree of political leverage foreigners have been able to exercise over the dominant military machine and looks for pointers to future involvement. The argument is that while external actors can claim some success, they have generally fallen far short of their major objectives in shaping Myanmar’s politics. The result is that today global policy responses are fiercely contested not only among outsiders, but also among people living and working inside the country.

Policy debate

Although global debate about Myanmar dates from the reassertion of military rule in September 1988, Burma clearly witnessed extensive foreign involvement long before that. For decades in the British case and years in the Japanese, imperial powers sought to impose distinct forms of total subjugation on the territory and its people. Later, Cold War rivalries spilled into Burma, and “sudden crowds” of US advisers blew into its nascent democracy “like a keen, fresh, bracing wind, seeking to stir up the ancient world of Asia.”
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To an unusually large degree, however, independent Burma was a nonaligned, neutralist power.
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In the early 1950s even the Colombo Plan, an aid program promoted by Commonwealth states with US participation, was viewed with some suspicion by political leaders fearful of Cold War entanglements.
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Moreover, in the course of the 1950s and early 1960s most external action inside the country was terminated as foreign assistance was curtailed haphazardly by Nu, and decisively by Ne Win. Throughout the years down to 1988, outside involvement in Burmese politics and policy remained marginal and insignificant.