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Burma

Everyone is immensely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for tabling this Question and for his untiring efforts, to which many references have been made, in this and, indeed, in many other causes. In fact, I go so far to say that when your Lordships listen to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and—I do not want to make invidious selections—the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, they are really listening to expertise that is probably unmatched in any western legislature about this particular problem. I think that I also have to include the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, in that, although he appears to be an expert and fountain of knowledge on absolutely everything. So this is, for the rest of us, a sort of treat. We are listening to insights into the situation, which most other people, perhaps too many other people, are denied. What they bring home to us all in devastating, three-dimensional clarity and first-hand vividness is the horrifying nature of the regime in this amazing, and once great and wonderful, country. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming, as we have heard in the debate this afternoon, that atrocities of unparalleled nature and cruelty are being committed against the various people of—““Burma””, as I probably wrongly call it—Myanmar, and particularly against the tribal groups, the Karen, the Karenni, the Shan and, indeed, others as well. I want to detain your Lordships for a few minutes in trying to see how we get a way forward from the present situation. The evidence, the feelings and the horror are there, but the progress is not. How can we unlock the situation? There are two issues which I would like to try and set out and give shape to in an effort to carry that purpose forward. First, a lesser but important dilemma is that most people agree that one wants to have as little to do as possible with this repulsive regime. Therefore, the instinct is naturally to break links, cut off communications and so on, and to discourage investment, which to some extent has been done—and there is an even stronger argument for the discouragement. But at the same time, we hear the word ““dialogue”” mentioned in the debate, and that keeping lines open and particular lines of communication and information is part of the strategy going forward towards a nation which finally throws off, with help, this hideous regime with which it has been saddled. I think that it was my colleague in a debate in another place on the same subject who mentioned the absence of television in Burma. We all know from our experience of the collapse of the Soviet empire and the hideous Communist regime, that it was the television and, later on, the mobile telephone, which provided the window to the outside world that led people to say that they simply would not go on tolerating this fantastic difference between their ugly circumstances and the better circumstances the outside world could offer. I do not have an answer to the dilemma. But one has to be careful in following too vigorously the path of cutting off every link and remember that there are some kinds of links that we must preserve. The second is the much bigger issue which has arisen in almost every speech that your Lordships have made this afternoon. That is, leaders of responsible nations are ready to say that they of course recognise these abuses and the tyranny, that they are totally against it, that crimes against humanity have almost certainly been committed, and that it is all very deplorable. There somehow it stops. Not quite; in the Security Council we have the five permanent members—this rather antique arrangement, which somehow we do not seem to be able to break out of. Three of them are members of the Security Council—the United States, the United Kingdom and France. They have made it quite clear—I hope I am not doing the Minister’s job—that they want this matter brought to the Security Council’s attention. They have not denied that that is what they would like in certain circumstances and if there were not certain difficulties, which I will come to in a moment. They are absolutely right, not merely because of the horrors within Burma itself, but because the country is a major source of narcotics and amphetamine-type stimulants. In a sense, Burma is not just a miserable sink of atrocities in itself, but it is a fountain of poison which is infecting the entire world, so we are all involved from the start. There is no question that this is a very bad phenomenon. Whether one can go as far as the Havel report and say that it is a threat to the peace of the world is a debatable matter. In a sense it is. It is killing young people across the globe by its existence and policies. I think all this has been put with immense clarity by the UN Special Rapporteur, Professor Paulo Pinheiro. He has made the case as clearly as one could. Yet, here we are and we are stuck. Perhaps I may share with your Lordships the inner mechanics of how one gets a Security Council resolution forward. I understand, and the Minister may correct me, that it requires, in addition to the United States, which should be a fairly decisive weight, eight other members of the Security Council, including the permanent and the rotating ones. It appears to be the view of HMG, which we will hear in a moment, and others that currently they cannot get hold of this eight. They cannot command the eight. They can get nearly that, but not quite the eight members on top of the United States. So the first question is: will that change on 1 January? That is when the non-permanent members rotate and new faces appear. Would this be a good time to bring to the attention of the Security Council, with the aim of getting a resolution, the case of Burma, which, as I say, our own country and others want to happen? The evidence and case for that is obvious. The UN Special Rapporteur has made the case. Would that be the moment for getting it forward? Obviously, a resolution would be extremely welcome. It will cover all the sorts of things that the noble Lord, Lord Chan, suggested. It would call, I hope in absolutely and unambiguous terms, for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and for many other things. I would like to hear the Minister’s views on this question: were we to follow the kind of route which your Lordships have suggested—and I can understand the sincerity and feeling behind such a suggestion—of bringing Myanmar onto the agenda now, in a sense, in a forcible way, would that simply result in a Russian and Chinese veto? If so, would that give just the kind of succour and help to the junta to carry on with its cruelty that it is looking and hoping for and not at the moment getting? That seems to me to be the dilemma. I do not begin to see the way through it. But, if that is the danger, then we must proceed with great care. Some advances have been made, maybe as a result of things said in your Lordships’ House. The almost absurd folly of giving Myanmar the chairmanship of the ASEAN council has been averted. The ASEAN members must have realised that that would be too much and going too far and that has been headed off, so there is a small gain there. I would hate to see that very small gain jeopardised by the whole project, as it were, driving into the grim buffers of a total Chinese and Russian veto. We would like to hear from the Government how, in carrying this forward, they will focus on the chief obstacles and overcome them—in particular, how they will focus on the attitude of China, to which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, rightly referred. The danger is much bigger than Burma alone. The more that China is ““harangued””—I choose my words carefully—in crude terms about the need to become democratic tomorrow morning, and so forth, which is the sort of speech I believe that the President of the United States made on his recent tour, the more China will follow its foreign policy. It will support all the rogue states to show that it is separate from the United States and can have a foreign policy of its own. That is the current posture of China. That is why it supports Burma, in particular. However, China also supports many other rogue countries, some for very practical reasons relating to oil and resources. Burma is certainly included in that, as well as the Sudan and Venezuela. China has a massive investment and involvement in those areas. It supports other countries to further its policy—to put it in unparliamentary language—of ““getting up the noses”” of the Americans and the Bush administration. For example, China supports Mr Mugabe. There is no conceivable reason relating to raw materials to support him; it is entirely to irritate the Americans and the rest of us. So that is the Chinese policy. Therefore, should we not examine those policies which appear to be driving China more and more into assisting and opening its arms to Burma and, in the other way, driving Burma and this hideous junta into the arms of China? The ugly fact is that the Chinese are becoming more involved in Burma. The junta is finding the delights of relying on the growing resources of Beijing extremely extractive, and the more it turns that way, the more it feels it is on a winning ticket. It may have reason for believing so because, unfortunately, we live in a world where the Chinese look out from Beijing and see that there has been a collapse in American soft power. A recent survey showed that in all Muslim countries and, I believe, 80 per cent of all western countries, opinion was in favour of stronger links with China and weaker links with the United States. That is the extraordinary situation we have reached, where China, which is by no means a democracy and has its own extremely ugly abuses and practices, is able to parade on the world stage as being preferable in the eyes of many countries to the United States. That gives great comfort to the Burmese junta and will continue to do so; and it will mean that however strongly we fight and feel about the hideous processes there, we will find that China stands in the way. In the end, it comes down to wanting to do all the things that your Lordships have suggested—because they are right—but also realising that until the Chinese embrace of Burma can somehow be turned into a squeeze, our efforts will not have the effect we want and we will find ourselves blocked at the Security Council. That is my analysis. If the Minister tells me I am wrong, I am ready to accept that. But the focus and goal of our policy should be to ensure that somehow China and Russia take a different view and realise that they are destroying their own interests in the long term and should reverse their policies. This would enable us to bring the matter before the United Nations. At that point sanctions could be put in place and other pressures brought to bear, thus leading to the release of the marvellous Aung San Suu Kyi and, at last, Burma will be brought into the light. Until then, I am afraid that I am a bit of a pessimist on the whole issue.