Comments

Thank you for your comment. It would be as wrong for Indonesian officials to be deferential to Australia as vice versa.

As it happens, I don’t know any Australian politicians now.

Wouldn’t it be too ‘restrictive’ keeping bilateral relations restricted to nations that would not attempt to influence Myanmar, ideologically (perhaps not religiously) nowadays?

True Burma’s ties with Israel go way back to U Nu’s time as The Irrawaddy reported recently over the CIC Min Aung Hlaing’s visit to Israel.

After the war, then Prime Minister U Nu visited Israel in 1955, becoming the first Asian leader to travel to the Jewish state.

During his visit, U Nu toured several “kibbutzim” communities–settlements based on co-operative agricultural practices–and was sufficiently impressed that he established similar settlements in Shan State upon his return.

U Nu, one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, was seen as Israel’s lone champion in Asia, as one western diplomat put it at the time. Subsequently, hundreds of Burmese students, military officers and officials were sent to Israel for education and training…. U Nu had pushed for Israel to be invited to the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, but reneged over concerns of alienating Arab states.

So yes, one can certainly understand Peter Cohen’s fondness of U Nu.

Many Burmese in the 1970s even suspected that some of the country’s intelligence officers were trained by Mossad, but there were no grounds to substantiate such speculation.

In reality, U Nu could not pursue a pro-Israel foreign policy without countenancing other pressures, including from China, a country that fostered ties with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

U Nu publically distanced himself from Israel over the Suez Canal crisis in 1956. The Burmese leader condemned Israel and Western powers, including the UK and France, and backed the United Nations’ calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Egypt.

But the honeymoon was far from over.

Strong ties continued to be forged throughout the military dictatorship era. The Uzi submachine gun was the weapon of choice for Ne Win’s bodyguards.

Can we therefore with your permission list Israel as one of the states that propped up military rule in Burma long before China then, Peter?

The Israel-Burma relationship came under increased scrutiny after the 1988 military coup in Burma that accompanied a ruthless crackdown on nationwide pro-democracy protests. After much of the international community had imposed sanctions on the country, in 1991, Israeli weapons manufacturers reportedly sold submachine guns and 150mm howitzers to the military regime.

Economic ties have played an important part too even if –
In contrast to David Ben-Gurion’s 1961 visit, Min Aung Hlaing’s mission centered more on military hardware than modes of meditation.

Can the peoples of Burma expect all that firepower to be turned on them once more if they start misbehaving like exercising their democratic right to elect the party they want to govern the country and are foolish enough to insist that power must be transferred?

Would like to say a heartfelt thanks for this tribute. I do not know you but you wrote this wonderfully. He was my father, and I miss him so much. Not only was he a wonderful Professor, researcher, but just someone with pure talent that one can only be born with. I hope one day to be half as quirky and clever as he was, and I hope I made him proud. It makes me happy to see how many people he touched and the status he had in his field. So thank you for this.

International observers like the Carter Center have their work cut out. Can’t afford to let them take the eye off the ball, or rather the ballot box in this instance.

Incredulous it may seem but there was a first hand account I recall during the 1974 Constitution referendum to enshrine Ne Win’s one party rule – a township medical officer involved in the process found upon touching the ballot box white paint coming off on her hands. They had just repainted the NO black box white to turn the lot YES to the new constitution! It’s elementary, huh?

Really a case of better the devil you know or the lesser of two evils. For a cosmopolitan intellectual you seem to have a very B&W view of our world – East bad West good. Spent too much time in the USIS library in your younger days and then a good booster having reached the ‘city on the hill’?

They just happen to be on different levels of the evolutionary scale of global capitalism with China catching up like Japan and the rest of the Asia Pacific region before, only by dint of its sheer size, ambition and geographic position it has become a monster I agree. Remember who made it happen? Ping pong diplomacy and détente ring a bell? On a much smaller scale that’s what’s happening with the “pivot to Asia”. From containing the ‘evil empire’ they raised a monster, now it’s its turn to be contained because, surprise surprise, it’s turned on them. The same with the Kokang conflict in our own domestic scenario.

What we’ve been going through is the robber baron stage, only the ‘railroad bosses’ are called laoban. And I would say yes, let’s telescope it forward.

Achievable in the 21st C and in fact that is exactly what the military rulers in their own Burmese way to globalisation are trying. And that is why a lot of expats have returned to help society, the economy and themselves, the younger expats also willing and contemplating to do so.

Would I be gloating if I say I foresaw the frustration and the disillusion before they got home to face it as reality hit them? No, it’s tragic that this outpouring of patriotic good will has to end like that.

Burmese alphabet has no “Ra” sounding letter, but “Ya” sounding letters Ya-palet and Ya-gout only.

We Burmese never call our famous king and founder of first Burmese empire “Anawrahta” as we always call him King Anawyahta.

Does anyone notice “Ya” sound is harsher than “Ra” sound? Burmese used to be a martial tribe and our ancestors pronounced most words including adopted words harshly.

That was the sole reason Prince Rama and Princess Sita from ancient Indian epic Ramayana became Prine Yama and Princess Thida in Burmese version of Ramayana or Yamayana as we call it.

I have no doubt that the division of Asia-Pacific from the rest of the humanities and social sciences creates many headaches.

But in my own view, the existence of CAPS is something to be defended vigorously. Why? Because I don’t see how gems like Arndt Corden and Political and Social Change survive in a rationalized in a “US-style” university hierarchy where they are joined together with units like Politics and International Relations. Universities that strive for world rankings aren’t great at having unique, distinctive units like a hypothetical Asia-Pacific College of Social Science and Humanities. If one were created, my bet is that the very things that make it distinctive would be immediately under threat, exactly because they are so distinctive.

You can imagine a higher-level administrator surveying the terrain. “What world-class university has a department of Political and Social Change? And how many top-5s do those area-focused economists have?”

ANU changes things up so frequently that I never know what unit is where, under which division or school, and that instability itself is what worries me when it comes to protecting the distinctiveness of its Asia Pacific focus.

If CAPS is an inefficient quirk, well, it’s one that I quite like, dysfunctions notwithstanding. I’d hate to see anything threaten it.

Where do you live Moe Aung? In China? LOL

I have no idea how the staff of Burmese diplomatic missions are elected. I have never seen equivalent entry examinations, interviews or due process. Most, if not all, are connected to military figures. If what they said and did is a guide, they are ridiculously bad at their jobs. Rather than using factual evidence, Burmese ambassador to Hong Kong once told the media that Rohingya/Bengali are as “ugly as ogres” and other racist remarks you would never hear from an ambassador, putting a shame on the country he represents. When a group of Burmese escaped from slavery in Indonesia and asked for consular assistance, the ambassador gave them “a bag of rice” and asked them go. It took another twenty years to go back, only when AP investigations led to US assistance. Ten Burmese were murdered in Indonesia waters. The embassy couldn’t even report to the families, let alone to strive for justice. In Singapore, it’s not a secret that nobody wants to go to the Embassy. The embassy as well, lives alone, never appears to have involved in Burmese problems.

So, there is some “conflict of interest” about the author to come to defend the embassy staff rather than 3 million people who have lost their rights to vote under the shady procedures. People are likely to defend something they have identified with. It’s all about the blame game. Embassies blame UEC. UEC blames embassies. The truth is both are government ministries and both have the responsibility. It’s something they can coordinate, simplify and plan. They should be made flexible rather than following all the papers. In Singapore, many Burmese were in tears after their rights to vote had been rejected even though they followed all the procedures. It was atrociously planned by UEC, and badly managed by the embassies.