SANCTIONS MUST TARGET MYANMAR LEADERSHIP
The international community must impose them like they did on South Africa’s apartheid regime
ACCORDING to Amnesty International, in the last couple of weeks, more Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh than those who fled to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea last year from the conflict-ridden countries in the Middle East and Africa.
For a country like Myanmar with a population of 50 million people, that is an exodus in humongous proportion. And, when we add them to the few hundred thousands of Rohingya already living in Bangladesh, the enormity of the sufferings and challenges posed to Bangladesh become all the more apparent. Almost the entire world community (barring, of course, some governments who have given more importance to their geopolitical interests than basic humane values) have condemned the brutalities on the Rohingya perpetrated by the authorities in Myanmar and have rendered some humanitarian assistance in the form of emergency relief. However, any real pressure on the authorities of Myanmar has so far been missing, and unless Myanmar authorities end their repression, no amount of humanitarian relief will change the situation.
This commentary will address the option of imposing some sort of economic sanctions on Myanmar.
Sanctions are a less deadly and expensive option than armed intervention. Nonetheless, sanctions against rogue regimes are generally a very complex proposition. The biggest problem with the sanctions is that it would often hit its intended beneficiaries the hardest and may cement the power of the government which is ostracised by the international community. The various sanctions imposed on North Korea
may testify to this, that whereas innumerable North Koreans have languished, the despotic regime does not show any signs of its power declining.
Another challenge with sanctions is that for them to wield real pressure on a regime, they need to be followed by most of the countries. When sanctions are unilaterally imposed or imposed by just a few countries, the targeted regime can always deal with other countries and get around the pain intended to be inflicted. For instance, many believe that sanctions against the apartheid in Africa worked because it was almost universally followed making the then South Africa almost a pariah state in the international community.
With both Russia and China being sympathetic to the Myanmar authorities, any sanction, let alone any armed intervention in Myanmar under the auspices of a United Nations-led force, will have no effect. Hence, any sanction has to come from the rest of the world, in particular, the United States and its allies who have
sufficient clout to inflict some pain on the authorities in Myanmar. Such a sanction, should to the extent possible, target the leadership in Myanmar and not its common people (although apparently, the response of the common people of Myanmar on the brutalities perpetrated on Myanmar is quite depressing as most of them seem not to care, or even worse, are complacent). Historically, the US had imposed tough sanctions against Myanmar’s junta when it was suppressing democratic governance in Myanmar. Democracy is critical, but the life of hundreds of thousands of people would be far more so. And common people in Myanmar would have to bear the brunt of the sanctions although they have no role whatsoever in the events that triggered the sanctions.
Sanctions with a bearing on trade may legally be challenged in international court, for instance, before the dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organisation. Whether or not such a challenge would legally hold would depend on the scope of the sanction, but it does not seem likely that the regime in Myanmar possesses the political capital to mount such a legal challenge. A sanction not joined by regional powers such as Russia, China, and India would be limited in its impact, but should still have its bite. And in the same vein, if the US and its allies do not impose any economic sanctions on Myanmar, then if states which have denounced the activities of Myanmar collectively do this, even that would have some modicum of impact, albeit a limited one.
A critical and tangible impact of sanctions on authorities in Myanmar can be that many foreign investors from economically-advanced countries that have been pondering to invest in Myanmar would be cautious in making their investment decisions. Indeed, some have implied that one of the motives of the latest brutalities on Rohingya is to drive Rohingya out of their homes and use their deserted lands for large-scale foreign direct investment. In any case, even a symbolic sanction with no direct bearing on companies doing business in Myanmar would send a strong message to multinational companies which would have to care about the perception of the global consumers more than ever.
Indeed, with the stripping of Rohingya of their Myanmar citizenship through a 1982 law, and ignoring the recommendations of the Annan Commission, the authorities have signalled their intention to not treat them as equals with the rest of the people of Myanmar.
Now that when even Aung San Suu Kyi repeats what the junta has over the years said, there seems to be very little hope that a simple dialogue with Myanmar would achieve anything. The international community should never leave out the option of dialogue but being at the table with the authorities of Myanmar with nothing but words seem to be a futile option.