BANGKOK: In his landmark visit to the United States, Myanmar President Thein Sein made all the right noises: He called for an end to inter-communal violence and a national identity that would include people from all faiths. He talked about sharing power and resources to bring about peace with the armed Kachin ethnic minority.
Yet he also told American media that the military “will always have a special place” in Myanmar’s government, highlighting intractable issues on the country’s road to democracy.
The visit is at best “one more milestone in a steady course of development”, says Dr Michael Montesano, a visiting research fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
The visit comes two weeks before Myanmar hosts its first ever World Economic Forum East Asia meet. Long isolated from the West, it is now slowly being reinstated and this visit is a key punctuation mark in that process. The resource-rich country used to be known for its good education, and is now trying to make up for lost ground as potential investors beat a path to its door.
The US, meanwhile, has much interest in courting the strategically located country to measure up to China’s influence in the region.
Still, Myanmar’s military continues to play a significant role in its economy and politics. A quarter of all seats in its fledgling Parliament are reserved for it.
While former general Thein Sein “is aware the military needs to redefine its role”, it remains one of the biggest challenges in his presidency, said Lex Rieffel, a senior fellow at think-tank Brookings Institution.
During their White House meeting, US President Barack Obama, in a concession to the former pariah state, referred many times to Myanmar instead of Burma, a colonial name preferred by opponents of the former military regime and up until recently used by the US.
While he praised his counterpart’s “genuine efforts to resolve longstanding ethnic conflicts”, he also expressed concern about the recent violence directed at Rohingya Muslims, a minority group that has fled the country in thousands. Human rights groups have alleged official complicity.
Thein Sein later addressed this publicly in Johns Hopkins University, saying the violence was “extremely tragic” and reiterated an earlier call to bring the perpetrators to justice and end “all forms of discrimination”.
But Dr Maung Zarni, a visiting fellow at the civil society and human security research unit of the London School of Economics, says there were credible allegations “that the officials and state security organisations themselves were directly or indirectly involved in the mass violence”.
In a Washington Post interview on Sunday, Thein Sein reiterated the troubling official line that the Rohingya were not considered part of Myanmar’s races. “We only have Bengalis who were brought for farming” during British rule, he said.
Meanwhile, Myanmar has reportedly over 100 political prisoners still behind bars. While Obama acknowledged the “steady process” in their release over the last two years, analysts noted that any developments on this front are and will continue to be tightly controlled by the government.
Last Friday, Myanmar released some 20 prisoners, following a pattern of amnesties timed to coincide with high-profile meetings.
By arrangement with The Straits Times