Protesters' sandals are left scattered on the ground Sept. 27, 2007 after soldiers fired automatic weapons into a crowd in downtown Rangoon, Burma, also known as Myanmar. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters were fired on in Burma's main city while braving a crackdown that has drawn international appeals for restraint by the ruling military junta. Nine people were reportedly killed. (The Mandalay Gazette/Associated Press)
Don Murray
Watching Burmese monks march, from a safe distance
September 28, 2007
In a country in Asia, monks marched. Some began to call it a 'Saffron Revolution.' There were echoes of a 'Velvet Revolution' in a small country in Europe almost twenty years earlier.
In Europe, two large countries with new leaders were in the process of painting a new face on their old foreign policies. This was a tricky manoeuvre. Their foreign ministers seized on the monks in Asia as a very useful tool.
Crafting new foreign policies is never simple. It's even more complex when the new leaders are at the head of old governments.
That is the case in both Britain and France. Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac have gone, replaced by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Both were powerful ministers in the governments of the men they replaced. Both are now embarked on an extensive public relations campaign suggesting their governments are new, dynamic and different.
And so, at the conference of Britain's governing Labour party, Brown's boyish-looking foreign minister, David Miliband, strode to the podium.
Britain's empty, trendy words
In a short speech which managed not to mention previous prime minister Tony Blair at all, Miliband did manage to damn his foreign policy with faint praise and even with open criticism on several occasions.
He talked of "the scars of 10 years of government," about Blair's wars (four times in four different countries British troops were sent into action).
He said: "while we've won the wars it's been harder to win the peace. The lesson is that while there are military victories there never is a military 'solution.' "
This was quite breathtaking, particularly since Miliband spent years as Blair's policy chief aide and then graduated to his cabinet.
The boy was biting the hand that had nourished his political career. There was, of course, no suggestion that British troops would actually leave Iraq or Afghanistan soon.
Then Miliband turned to the country of the monks.
"And while I'm at it, wasn't it brilliant to see Aung San Suu Kyi alive and well outside her house last week. I think it will be even more brilliant when she takes her rightful place as the elected leader of a free and democratic Burma," he said.
Note the use of the word 'brilliant.' The boy is trendy, even in his use of diplomatic language.
His boss, Gordon Brown, also noticed the monks, and demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council to denounce the military regime.
Words play well at home, have little impact abroad
In this Brown was supported by the new president of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, and his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner.
Kouchner isn't young, in fact he's rather old at almost 68, but he's also trendy: the founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, and a socialist appointed by Sarkozy, a right-wing leader.
Sarkozy, with an eye to the monks, called for a halt to new investment in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Kouchner went further, calling for European dis-investment in the country. This, too, was breathtaking.
France, for years, has blocked strong European Union sanctions against Burma because the French oil company Total, which has strong ties to the French state, has invested massively in building and running a gas pipeline in Burma.
Both new leaders knew their words would play well at home but have little impact on the country they were talking about.
The military rulers in Burma have updated the Stalinist concept of Socialism in one country; their system could be described as Militarism in one country.
And the new leaders in France and Britain know that any comparison of the movement launched by the Burmese monks with the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia misses the point.
The communist regimes of Eastern Europe had a protector, the Soviet Union. But in October 1989 the protector's leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, signalled that Moscow was no longer interested in propping up these unpopular regimes. The Berlin Wall was breached and, like dominoes, the regimes fell.
Burma, too, has a protector. It is China, a major investor and a major consumer of Burma's raw materials.
Like the Burmese junta, the Chinese communist leadership has faced a popular movement in the streets and put it down with gunfire and death.
And, at the Security Council, it blocked any condemnation of the Burmese leadership. What was happening in the country, its ambassador said, was an internal matter not worthy of international intervention.
Once again the country is sealed off, once again demonstrators die.
And, on the other side of the world, new leaders denounce the crime in words designed to clothe new foreign policies that, on examination, are not so new, after all.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Biography
During his 30 years at CBC, Don Murray has filed hundreds of reports in French and English from China, Europe, the Middle East and the Soviet Union. He is currently based in London. He wrote A Democracy of Despots, documenting the collapse and rebirth of Russia. From Berlin, he reported the Bosnia peace agreement talks and, based in London, the death of Diana and Northern Ireland peace talks. He authored Family Wars for the International Journal, paralleling Northern Ireland and Bosnia. He has covered wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.