Working Paper
by Ronnie Liu

On the occasion of Aung San Suu Kyi's 61st birthday on Monday, 19 June, 2006

(Indonesia, Thursday): The foundation for the ASEAN Security Community (ASC) was laid down by ASEAN leaders in Bali on 7 October 2003.

We note that quite a few of the ASEAN leaders who signed the Bali Concord II are no longer in office today. These include President Megawati Soekarnoputri, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, and Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt.

It was argued that the security community idea came at a time when member states realized that the organization's lack of direction since the Asian financial crisis has not only diminished ASEAN's standing internationally, but is impeding cooperation within the region.

The idea of establishing ASC was largely an Indonesian effort. It's therefore highly appropriate and meaningful for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung foundation (FES) to choose Jakarta as the place to assess the achievements, challenges, strengths and weaknesses in the implementation of the ASEAN Security Community since its inception one and a half years ago.

Leonard C. Sebastian and Chong Ja Ian of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) in Singapore, however, had predicted at the time of the inception of ASC that the factors that make it advantageous for ASEAN to pursue the creation of a security community may, however, also impede the effort.

They argued that sovereignty has long been important to ASEAN members and therefore difficult for them to modify existing interpretations of the notions of non-intervention and non-interference.

Moreover, the longstanding practice of seeking consensus within the group will complicate the matters, making it difficult to push forward with the more extensive and intrusive forms of cooperation needed to deal with transnational security issues.

They also predicted that given the sensitivity of most ASEAN members to non-domestic pressure, the member states will not be ready to delegate authority over critical issues to a regional entity.

I'm afraid that most of the observations and predictions made by Leonard C. Sebastian and Chong Ja Ian have largely proven to be true. The biggest obstacle preventing the ASC from becoming a real security community is this so-called non-interference policy.

The truth is, the majority of the governments in ASEAN are not democratic. Most do not have a good human rights record. The non-interference policy, therefore, suits their agenda well.

It was never the intention of these government leaders to make ASEAN a truly amalgamated security community. They will always prefer ASEAN to be a loose entity so that they can continue to have a "free hand" in running their respective countries.

After one and a half years, ASC remains largely as a concept rather than a real and effective entity. It will continue to be so for a long time to come.

A perspective from Malaysia

Malaysia is currently not at ease with other ASEAN neighbors such as Thailand and Singapore.

While Malaysia is not comfortable with the chaotic situation in Southern Thailand, Thailand, on the other hand, has alleged that "foreigners" were involved in the unrest and that the Malaysian side has been harbouring Thai Muslim rebels. As the Southern Thailand conflict involves Thai Muslims, greater understanding and cooperation between the two member states is necessary.

Malaysia is also in an “uncomfortable” situation with Singapore over the "crooked half bridge" and a range of other longstanding bilateral issues.

It is obvious that the ASC is not doing much to help resolve these differences. All these challenges, in a way, demonstrate the need for the effective implementation of ASC.

Myanmar: ASEAN's shame

One of the greatest failures of ASC, or ASEAN as a whole, is of course, Myanmar. ASC has so far contributed practically nothing in helping to resolve the crisis in Myanmar.

This has prompted the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Caucus on Myanmar (AIPMC) to call for the suspension of Myanmar from ASEAN if there is no tangible and acceptable progress in democratization and national reconciliation.

Lim Kit Siang, the Malaysian Parliamentary Opposition Leader and one of the major movers of AIPMC, has called for a two-prong approach as a constant compass for all pro-Burma democracy activists in the ASEAN countries, viz:

 · Firstly, the Myanmar military junta must be required by ASEAN and the international community to demonstrate regular progress in democratization and national reconciliation; and

 · Secondly, ASEAN governments at ASEAN meetings should regularly monitor the progress in democratization and national reconciliation in Myanmar.

There can be no tangible and acceptable progress in democratisation in Myanmar if the military junta do not release Burma’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi -- who has been in incarceration for 11 of the past 17 years and is the only Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in the world in detention -- as well as restore the personal, civil and political rights of the over 1,000 political prisoners in the country.

The Myanmar military junta has repeatedly taken ASEAN and the international community for a ride with broken promises to release Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners in the country as well as embark on the process of democratization and national reconciliation.

Amnesty International has rightly pointed out that the people of Myanmar have seen no significant improvement in human rights, democracy or national reconciliation for 17 years. The people have been persecuted for reporting human rights violations and talking to journalists; lengthy prison sentences have been handed down to political figures for engaging in political discussion; torture continues unabated and people regularly die in suspicious circumstances in the country’s prisons.

In October 2005, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Myanmar Sergio Pinheiro reported that "widespread and systematic human rights violations, grave abuses against ethnic communities, and lack of freedom of assembly and association are still the norm in Myanmar".

He said the military government's plan for democracy "has no timeframe and no scale" and deplored the abuses against ethnic groups, the prevalence of forced labour of men, women, children and elderly, and forced relocations of entire villages.

From the end of 2002 to October 2004, he estimated that 157,000 people had been displaced by armed conflict, and 240 villages destroyed or relocated. Between 700,000 and a million people have fled Myanmar to nearby Thailand, and others have fled to India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and other countries to escape persecution, he added.

The resignation of a frustrated Tan Sri Razali Ismail, the Special United Nations Envoy to Myanmar, at the stonewalling and obstructionist tactics by the military junta, and refusing him entry into Myanmar for nearly two years, is a sombre and salutary reminder that a tougher ASEAN position on the Myanmar issue is very long overdue.

The ASEAN Foreign Ministers Retreat in Bali in May 2006 was a total failure. Never before had such high hopes been vested in an ASEAN Foreign Ministers Retreat and never again is it likely to become such an utter flop.

Before the Bali Retreat, several ASEAN Foreign Ministers had been quite frank and outspoken about the ASEAN crisis posed by Myanmar's intransigent policies.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar had initially said ASEAN must be firm with Myanmar whose military junta is holding ASEAN hostage, hampering progress and bringing the region into disrepute.

When Syed Hamid conceded that the ASEAN Foreign Ministers had decided to "throw in the towel" as there was nothing more they can do, and that "their only hope now is that Myanmar's military junta will come to their senses", it marked the lowest point of ASEAN credibility in its 39-year history.

This is because the Myanmar military junta had been rewarded instead of being reprimanded for its intransigence and contempt for the Kuala Lumpur ASEAN Summit decision last December when it showed utter disregard for the special ASEAN envoy dispatched to Myanmar. Syed Hamid, the special ASEAN Summit envoy, was denied a meeting with top junta leader Senior General Than Shwe and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. In fact, Syed Hamid even had to cut short his trip by one day, after his meeting was repeatedly put off by the military government.

ASEAN foreign ministers, leaders and governments must make it clear to the Myanmar military junta that such uncooperative attitude and intransigence is completely unacceptable and antithetical to the ASEAN spirit.

Myanmar was admitted to ASEAN almost a decade ago — primarily at Malaysia's urging — and has disgraced the 10-member group ever since. Led by Senior Gen. Than Shwe, Burma's military junta has crushed Suu Kyi's popularly-elected party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and funded itself through illicit drug sales and human trafficking. It now poses a threat to its neighbours and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole.

ASEAN's efforts to reason with the regime have floundered. The AIPMC’s calls for Burma to move toward democracy have fallen on deaf ears. In May 2006, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono suggested that a gradual democratic transition could benefit soldiers and civilians alike. The Indonesian president’s advice secured little success, save the appointment of two Indonesian special envoys to the country, neither of whom has any clear mission.

International processes — such as the United Nations' referral of Burma to its Security Council — face an uphill battle. However, the U.S. Senate's hearings on Burma and a European meeting on aid to Burma in Brussels point to the fact that this is a sticky issue that will not go away.

Meanwhile, the situation within Myanmar is rapidly deteriorating. Safely ensconced in the jungle military fortress of their new capital Pyinmana, the regime has unleashed a new round of public violence to crush nascent pro-democracy movements. On March 17, police and fire brigade personnel lynched former political prisoner Thet Naing Oo at a tea stall in a Rangoon suburb. A few days later, student leader and former political prisoner Min Ko Naing was assaulted after attending the funeral of NLD MP Thein Win. The brutality is spreading into the countryside too: Earlier this month, the Burmese army bombarded villages in Karen State with heavy artillery, forcing more than a thousand people to flee their homes.

This isn't just a problem for ASEAN. Thanks to the generals' broad diversion of funds away from health and education — and towards military spending — Myanmar is facing a nationwide HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Burmese border regions along the drug trafficking routes into China and India exhibit the highest infection rates. Meanwhile, the generals look the other way as domestic cartels increase the production of heroin and other drugs.

The continued incarceration of Suu Kyi is not only an indictment of the Myanmar military junta as one of the world's most repressive regimes for its brutal suppression of democracy and violation of human rights, but also of the United Nations and ASEAN for their impotence and irrelevance.

Both regional and international opinion must be forced on the Myanmar military junta that "Enough is Enough" and there must be a concerted plan of action to put renewed pressure on the junta, for the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and over a thousand political prisoners, and for meaningful progress in democratization and national reconciliation in Burma.

At the international level, the UN Security Council must place the Myanmar issue on its official agenda to reflect and pursue the annual concerns of the UN General Assembly on the prolonged humanitarian and democratic disaster in Burma.

References: blog.limkitsiang.com; Trends in SEA series 8(2004); aseansec.org.