Article in Huffington Post by Mark Farmaner, Director of Burma Campaign UK.
Four years after its reform process began, Burma still has one of the worst human rights records in the world. In fact, human rights violations which break international law have actually increased, with evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and even precursors of genocide all happening under President Thein Sein’s rule.
These violations don’t fit easily into the ‘transition to democracy’ narrative which the British government is trying to present about Burma.
So when Foreign office Minister Hugo Swire MP is confronted with the inconsistency of claims of reform, and ongoing human rights violations on the ground, he faces a problem. The solution British diplomats, and diplomats in the USA and the rest of Europe seem to have agreed upon, is to dismiss these abuses as ‘bumps in the road’. ‘No transition is going to be easy’, they say. ‘Of course there will be occasional setbacks’, they say. ‘Just being cynical isn’t going to change anything’, they say. ‘The overall direction of travel is good’, they say.
This last phrase is perhaps the most telling. What they are effectively saying is that as long as government-led reforms continue, they won’t allow what is happening to the Rohingya to influence their policy of building closer relations with the Burmese government. Think about how the Burmese government will interpret this messaging. It is literally handing them a get out of jail free card to do what they like regarding the Rohingya. And as we have seen since 2012, they are playing that card at every opportunity.