Myanmar Foreign policy. Aung San Suu Kyi's victory does not bring Burma freedom | Zoya Phan. Aung San Suu Kyi waves to the crowd in Burma, with her party celebrating a major victory in byelections. Photograph: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images I have dreamed for many years of seeing Aung San Suu Kyi elected to parliament and watching thousands of people celebrating in the streets. Yet, while the scenes made me happy, I also felt a strange emptiness inside. We always expected that Aung San Suu Kyi being allowed to take a seat in parliament would be a final step on the road to democracy. Instead, it is only the first. Aung San Suu Kyi is even more cautious. Asked last week how democratic Burma was on a scale of one to 10, she answered "on the way to one". Too much importance has been attached to these byelections, whose significance is more symbolic than practical.
Yet, as Aung San Suu Kyi hoped, the byelection campaign has successfully mobilised many people, breaking down the fear of engaging in politics after generations of dictatorship. Why Burma Shouldn’t Listen to the IMF - By Rick Rowden. Burma is at a crossroads. While the country's dramatic (and fragile) political opening is receiving plenty of attention, its leaders are also confronting some stark decisions about their economic future. After decades of economic isolation, the economy of Burma (also known as Myanmar) is badly in need of reforms than can better promote development. The choices that Burma's government makes in the coming months could well determine what the country will look like 30 years from now: an industrialized South Korea or a resource-cursed Nigeria. Coinciding with its political opening, Burma's leadership has taken steps to deepen the pool of foreign investors in the economy beyond the traditional influence of neighbors China and Thailand.
The IMF has already sent several delegations to the country and is assisting the government in unifying its complex system of multiple exchange rates for the currency, the kyat, as a necessary first step to other reforms. SOE THAN WIN / AFP / Getty Images. Ending Myanmar's civil war. Beijing, China - In the past year, Myanmar's government has implemented a surprising series of liberalising reforms. Facing strong environmental and labour protests by activists and NGOs, President Thein Sein has halted construction of the Chinese-backed Myitsone hydroelectric dam, which would have been one of the largest dams in the world (152m tall) and was projected to supply 3,600 to 6,000MW of electricity, largely to Yunnan Province in China. In response to similar concerns, Thein Sein also stopped the building of a 4,000MW coal-fired power plant in the new Special Economic Zone, Dawei, where Thailand's largest construction company, Italian-Thai, is building a deepwater port to support container shipping to compete with Singapore and China.
He created a human rights commission that subsequently advocated for the release of the remaining political prisoners in the country. British rule Divides were not only drawn on ethnic lines; religious distinctions were forged as well.
Is Myanmar the new Asian tiger? Bangkok, Thailand - While the big story of 2012 in south-west Asia is the increasingly lethal US-Iran psychodrama, there's no bigger story in south-east Asia in the Year of the Dragon than the controlled opening of Myanmar. Everyone and his neighbour, East and West, has been trekking to Myanmar since US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit last November. It's virtually impossible these days to book a flight or a hotel room.
Like Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Astana in Kazakhstan a few years ago, the new capital Naypyidaw ("the abode of kings") - built from scratch with natural gas wealth halfway between Rangoon and Mandalay - is surging as a new promised land. In parallel, the European Union (EU) has lifted a travel ban on senior Myanmar officials. The Myanmar delegation was virtually mobbed at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos.
Thein Sein, a former prime minister, is an ex-general and member of the junta. The amazing race In this race against time, Asia is ahead of the West. Don't buy into Burma's cosmetic reforms. When the European Union reviews its Common Position on Burma next week it would be wise not to buy into the Burmese junta's cosmetic reforms. For the elaborate charade recently conducted by the Burmese junta to transfer power to former general Thein Sein as the president of a new "civilian" government, has not fooled the Burmese public at large. The entire process was, by any measure, a transparent attempt to legitimise the rule of the junta with just enough democratic window-dressing to make the country slightly more palatable to shareholders of international investment firms.
While celebrating the transformation from world-class pariah tyranny to some sort of "flawed democracy," only the deliberately naïve or shamelessly opportunistic would describe these events as progress toward real democratic freedoms. This transition to democracy, of course, does not exist – neither slow nor gradual. Dr Maung Zarni - maungZarni - staff pages - Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit - Research - International Development. Western hunger for Myanmar's 'cleansed' lands. When a team of health professionals reached the makeshift camps along the China-Myanmar border in September to meet with refugees displaced by fighting in Kachin State, they encountered a young boy whose tale symptomises how debased the wars in Myanmar's border regions have become.
The 15-year-old told staff from Physicians for Human Rights how he had been forced to walk in front of a Burmese army patrol, ensuring that he and not they took the full blast from any landmine hidden along the path. "They asked me where I was from and they asked me if I was in school. I told them yes I was in 7th standard. And then they said nothing but made me show them the way. If I did not show them the way I was afraid of getting shot. He is among more than 40,000 civilians who have been forced to flee their homes since fighting flared in June. Shell is also rumoured to be eyeing a stake in an offshore gas block south of Myanmar owned by Thailand's PTTE. 'A better friend than China' Political change in Burma ?