Memorandum by Dr Maung Zarni, Founder,
Free Burma Coalition, Visiting Research Fellow (2006-09), Department
of International Development (QEH), University of Oxford
The committee may have missed a major opportunity
to have a more fruitful, intellectually honest and in-depth discussion
because of Mr John Bercow's relentless and dogged pursuit of a
highly personal—as opposed to intellectual and professional—line
of questioning.
During the oral witness evidence taking session
on June 12, 2007, the entire line of questioning, MP John Bercow,
as a key patron of Western activist, hard-line regime changers
such as the Burma Campaign-UK (BCUK), pursued demonstrated that
Mr Bercow was more interested in attacking, with no good reasons,
personal integrity, professional credentials, of the oral evidence
givers who differ with his own personal views and those of the
British Burma lobby—BCUK—on how best to help the Burmese
people, namely Ashley South and myself.
Additionally, he seemed more intent on grandstanding
than soliciting nuanced and more strategically informed understandings
of the issues for which we were brought in to give our oral witness.
In one instance, conceivably fed by his BCUK
and other hard-line English activist clients, Mr Bercow lifted
out of context a few lines from my political poem which I circulated
in public domain Internet in 2006. In that poem, I as a Burmese
citizen was pained and lamenting the rape—historical and
contemporary—of natural resource-rich Burma (Myanma), the
country of my citizenship and origin, by various political forces—from
Kipling's colonialists to the current corporations from both "the
East" and "the West". I used a rather provocative
metaphor in referring to my country as `prostitute nation'—coined
by no other political figure than the late General Aung San, the
father of Aung San Suu Kyi, during a post-WWII speech to the still
colonial nation on eve of independence from Britain.
The phrase has long been part of the repertoire
of Burmese political vocabulary and commonly known to average
Burmese of all classes and backgrounds.
I used the imagery of the rape, in this poem
of mine, to describe this process of resource exploitation, which
has always been at the expense of ordinary Burmese people and
to the detriment of their country's future. Here I chose the female
metaphor to refer to the country, more specifically the ticklish
phrase `Kipling's Burma girl'. For in his `On the Road to Mandalay'
poem, the late defender of British imperialism, the Indian-born
Mr Kipling, famously wrote of the imagined `Burmah girl' inviting
the British soldier back to her country—then under British
colonial rule, having waited by the old pagoda in the port city
of Moulmein, Mon State.
Neither informed sufficiently about the local
political vocabulary or culture nor having literary understanding
of where the line `Kipling's Burmah girl' came from, Mr Bercow
implied that that `prostitute nation' and `Kipling's Burmah girl'
in effect refers to Aung San Suu Kyi, in front of the International
Development Committee and the attendees of the second session.
I was so disappointed with the level of understanding
which a British national politician displayed than insulted—although
I certainly was outraged and insulted—that I decided not
to respond his insult in kind and let the matter rest during the
section.
Mr Bercow's behaviour of distorting facts, wittingly
or otherwise, wearing his profound ignorance of Burmese political
history on his sleeves, and highly personalized attacks against
both my co-expert on Burma, Ashley South, and myself was highly
objectionable, below the belt and categorically unprofessional,
and un-befitting of an elected official and national politician.
This is not the first time Mr Bercow has behaved
so unconstructively, so un-intellectually and so unprofessionally.
At a 3-day policy discussion weekend retreat
held at the Wilton Park in November 2006, Mr Bercow came and delivered
a prepared political speech calling, in effect, for the regime
change in Burma (Myanma), completely oblivious to the fact that
the Burmese and other nationals, from various international agencies
and governments, had tremendously productive and constructive
discussions as to how best to address the difficult humanitarian
situation in Burma.
No other than the current British Ambassador
to Burma (Myanma), namely Mr Mark Canning, and Ashley South intervened
directly after Mr Bercow's ill-informed and out of place speech
at a forum designed to explore constructively and cooperatively
most strategic ways to move the Burma agenda forward.
With other Burmese present at the Wilton Park
forum who live in Burma, I too joined this collective intervention
by our British counterparts.
During the June 12, 2007 Burma session, Mr Bercow
made a reference to this unpleasant—and to him, humiliating—encounter
with both Ashley and myself 6-months ago. Instead of focusing
on the issue in question which the oral evidence gathering session
was set up to discuss, Mr Bercow seemed more interested in settling
the scores as he saw it than asking intelligent questions as to
how best to serve the needs of the refugee and international displaced
populations, both in the armed conflict zones and within the government
controlled territories of Burma (Myanma).
Finally, to my real outrage, Mr Bercow accused
me of accepting all the human rights atrocities which the Burmese
military junta and its troops have committed towards their own
citizens, using the following bizarre and twisted logic: that
because I went to have a meeting with the now ousted Prime Minister
Khin Nyunt's deputies in Rangoon in 2004 while atrocities were
going on therefore I must in effect be complicit or accept these
atrocities.
Mr Bercow, while claiming to support Aung San
Suu Kyi and the Burmese opposition, including the armed organizations
along the Thai-Burmese borders, seemed to have missed the highest
objective of the entire opposition—to settle Burma's domestic
political conflicts through dialogue.
Talking to one's adversaries even at the height
of the conflict is one of the better ways to establish confidence,
trust and mutual understanding. Working within UK's august political
body—the House of Commons—Mr Bercow seems to lack
a simple understanding that talking to one's adversaries or even
enemies doesn't amount to appeasement or endorsement of their
unacceptable behaviour.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been talking, on and
off, to her captors since 1988, both face-to-face and through
different channels. Myanma citizens and Burmese émigrés
and exiles talking to the junta—at all levels—is part
of "a citizens" efforts to find alternative ways toward
national reconciliation, and is consistent with the ultimate policy
objectives of various governments and the United Nations—reconciliation
through conversations.
It was precisely how US State Department justified
its both logistical and political support for my travel to Rangoon
to hold meetings with PM General Khin Nyunt's man while I was
still a political asylee in the United States. In the Burma Studies
Group Bi-Annual Conference held at the Northern Illinois University
in DeKalb, Illinois, in September 2004, the then Assistant Dy-Secretary
of State for Asian Affairs and now Chairman of the US-ASEAN Business
Council, Matthew Daley, had stated publicly the USG's rationale
for supporting any meetings—not just meetings between Aung
San Suu Kyi and the junta—amongst Burmese with the view
towards reconciliation and peaceful political settlements in their
country.
Sadly, this elemental and elementary fact—that
reconciliation requires talking to your enemies and opponents—seems
to have been lost on Mr John Bercow, who is driven by moral outrage
and hatred of the Burmese junta as opposed to the collective well-being
of the Burmese people. While his anger and outrage against the
junta is justified—something I too share—it is rather
lamentable that Mr John Bercow attempts to vent his anger and
negative energies, most specifically, against the two oral witnesses
who share the same objective of helping improve the lives of ordinary
Burmese people and helping to restore a more humanistic and acceptable
political governance and leadership in their country.
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