BANGKOK - Thailand's Thaksin administration has distanced itself from previous Thai governments' harsh rhetoric against Myanmar's generals and launched efforts to patch up relations with its neighbor through trade and cooperation. Bangkok's emphasis is to develop warmer ties between the two countries, with trade and business as the cement.
As a result, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's policy on Myanmar is coming under increasing fire from critics who say Bangkok is bowing to Yangon's wishes by avoiding references to its human-rights abuses during bilateral talks this week.
This attitude, they assert, continues to erode Thailand's reputation as one of the few countries in Southeast Asia that uphold human rights.
Myanmar has been under military rule since a 1962 coup put the generals in government. In the intervening 40 years, the military has violated human rights, including killing and imprisoning political opponents, forcing members of ethnic communities into slave labor and suppressing free expression.
Thailand is a leading foreign investor in Myanmar, to the tune of US$25.75 million in 2001. Official bilateral trade between the two totaled about 28 billion baht ($646 million) in the first six months of this year. And that figure only takes legitimate trade into account; the "black economy", especially narcotics exported into Thailand from Myanmar, is booming. Timber imports, both legal and otherwise, are also important to Thailand, as is a pipeline that brings natural gas from Myanmar into the kingdom.
But despite the policy of engagement toward Myanmar by Thailand and its Association of Southeast Asian Nations partners - notably Malaysia, whose Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has urged the world to "be patient" as Myanmar's four-decade-old military government takes halting steps toward democracy - little progress is apparent on the issue of human rights and the brutal oppression of ethnic minorities.
"The impression created is that Thailand is willing to protect the war criminals in Burma," charged Sunai Phasuk of Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based regional human-rights watchdog. (Burma was Myanmar's name before the country was officially rechristened by the military government; the capital, Rangoon, was also renamed Yangon.) "While the Burmese government is being condemned internationally for human rights abuses, including rape, the Thai government is not raising its voice," Sunai said.
According to a sarcastic barb doing the rounds here among Myanmese living in exile on this side of the border, when it comes to Myanmar, "Thai foreign policy is made in Yangon, not in Bangkok."
"There are increasing signs that Rangoon is dictating terms and the Thai government is willing to follow," said one Myanmese activist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is disturbing, this policy of appeasement."
These reactions come in the wake of formal talks here on Wednesday between Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai and his Myanmese counterpart, Win Aung.Human-rights groups, including Forum Asia, were hoping that Surakiart would use his meeting with Win Aung to discuss rights issues in addition to the topics the Thaksin administration is more warm to, such as trade and business opportunities. But that outcome was not to be. "The meeting was a good opportunity for Thailand to display its human-rights commitments but, as we saw, the Thaksin government has focused more on economic issues and human rights has become of less importance," said Srirak Plipat of the Thai office of Amnesty International, the global human-rights lobby.
Surakiart was quoted in the Thai press on Thursday as saying the discussions had focused on drug trafficking, illegal immigration, consular services and cross-border trade.
In sharp contrast to the Thai government's position on Myanmar's human-rights record was the message coming from the International Burma Summit, held on September 22-23 in Copenhagen."The International Burma Summit has been organized to focus attention not only on the truth of what is happening today in Burma but what we, as an international community, must do in response," declared a statement released by a high-profile panel at the summit.
The panel included Mairead Maguire, a Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern Ireland, Helle Degn, the human rights commissioner for the Baltic states and former Danish minister for development aid, and Asda Jayanama, a former Thai ambassador to the United Nations.They were unequivocal in their condemnation of Myanmar for gross human-rights violations. Particularly troubling to the panel was "compelling evidence of brutal and systematic sexual violence against women by the military throughout Burma".
In May, the two bodies monitoring rights abuses among the Shan, one of Myanmar's many ethnic groups, released a chilling report about the scale of sexual violence women in the Shan areas have been subjected to. Up to 625 girls and women in the Shan areas have been raped by the Myanmese military between 1996 and 2001, the report "License to Rape" said. Under international law, such violations are deemed a war crime.The authors of the report, the Shan Human Rights Foundation and the Shan Women's Action Network, accuse the Myanmese army of officially condoning rape as part of their anti-insurgency activities.
Also troubling, according to participants at the Copenhagen meeting, is the 1,400 political prisoners currently languishing in Myanmese detention centers, many of whom had been incarcerated for their work as democracy and human-rights activists. The prisoners range from students, monks and activists from political parties opposed to the junta to those belonging to ethnic groups and elected members of parliament.
"Political prisoners have been subjected to severe beatings, suffocation, the denial of decent food, water and rest, and other forms of torture and mistreatment," said the statement issued after the meeting.
In early May, Myanmar's military rulers came in for some praise after freeing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from 19 months of house arrest. The United Nations-brokered deal also resulted in the Nobel Peace laureate being allowed the freedom to travel across the country for her political work. The junta has also earned praise for releasing some of its political prisoners - some 400 to date.
Weeks ago, Bangkok displayed how far it would go to retain its alliance with its northern neighbor, when it ordered police crackdowns on activists and victims of rights abuses from Myanmar who had sought refuge in Thailand.
"Burmese dissidents feel upset and are worried by the Thai government's policies," said Min Zin, an associate editor at The Irrawaddy, a Thai-based monthly journal that focuses on Myanmese and Southeast Asian issues.(Inter Press Service)