By M.R. Narayan Swamy, IANS
New Delhi : India could have helped isolate China over Myanmar’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists by refusing to stand by the military junta, says a senior official of Human Rights Watch.
At the same time, Brad Adams, Executive Director of its Asia Division, admitted that international pressure alone might not be enough to make the Myanmar rulers throw in the towel.
Speaking to IANS, Adams said the junta appeared to have overcome the challenge of the protests due to international disunity and also the military’s ability to crush or come to terms with various armed opposition groups.
“As long as China, India and Thailand keep behaving they way they are, I don’t see (any future),” said Adams, who is visiting New Delhi.
“India could have isolated China as the only backer of the regime” by taking a hard stand against the military rulers, he added. “This would have made it much harder for the Chinese.”
He cited the example of Darfur, where Beijing at one point emerged as the only visible friend of the Sudanese government despite the massacres of the innocents that the world condemned in no uncertain terms. “That (isolation) mattered.”
Adams argued that India could have taken some tangible action such as recalling its ambassador from Myanmar to tell the regime that it did not approve of its suppression of the tens of thousands including Buddhist monks.
When the protests erupted in Myanmar last month, almost like the way they gripped the country 20 years ago, India first dismissed it as an internal issue.
However, as Western pressure mounted on China and India, New Delhi shifted its position slightly, saying it wanted the junta to probe reports of excesses and to work for reconciliation with its critics.
In 1988, following similar mass protests, India had come out strongly against the military junta. In the process, its ties with Myanmar soured. It was only in the 1990s that India reached out to the Myanmar military again.
Adams said he had discussed New Delhi’s support to Myanmar with Indian diplomats in Geneva.
“They realised they had managed to manoeuvre themselves into looking far worse than China, which takes a lot of doing.”
In contrast, the British and US governments had now started praising the Chinese role in pushing the military to reach out to the UN envoy, he said.
Adams, however, said: “I am not convinced that even with maximum international pressure, these guys would have thrown in the towel.”
He admitted that the regime was in a “much better shape” today.
“The major opposition to the regime has always been the armed opposition, not NLD (National League for Democracy). The NLD they can simply crush.”
He said Myanmar had nearly 20 “serious armed groups”, many of which had been fighting the regime for decades. Of this, he said, only one, the Karen National Union, continued to be a significant force.
This, Adams pointed out, was a “big difference” between 1988 and 2007.
Adams said the absence of armed opposition groups had led to fewer people making it to neighbouring Thailand.
“(In 1988), if you could just get into opposition armed groups’ area, they would give you sanctuary. Now they are either collaborating with the government or are non-existent or (hold areas) very far from big cities.
“So very few people are coming out… There has just been a handful. Had it been 1988, the figure by now would have been a few thousands.”
Adams said the military was using its own as well as media video footage of the demonstrations to get to the ringleaders of a revolt that shook the world.
Myanmar, he said, was admitting to 3,000 arrests. “Given the nature of the regime, if they say they have arrested 3,000, they (must) have arrested 6,000.
“They are going around at night and arresting people, even now… They have apparently been studying all the video footage, identifying people who had got involved. They are hunting these people down.
“The information we have is people have been questioned largely about who was in charge. So they are systematically trying to find out these people.”