Yangon (AsiaNews) – The ostensible willingness of Myanmar’s ruling military junta to engage in dialogue and reconciliation, which the United Nations has hailed as progress after its special envoy Ibrahim Gambari’s latest trip, fails to recognise the real situation in the country. the authorities continue to arrest monks and activists; state-controlled media continue to churn out propaganda; and social controls on a tired population continue to get tighter and tighter.
Sources in Mandalay and Yangon have told AsiaNews about widespread anxiety, about people who are worried that things will just get back to the way they were, following with apprehension the meetings between UN and government officials, but with no confidence that things can change. According to the sources, the world cannot imagine what it means living under a dictatorship that pervades every aspect of daily life. Whether in schools, markets, religion, government offices, everything has to go through the military.
But for Ibrahim Gambari, who yesterday spoke to the Security Council, some progress is being made in talks with Burma's military rulers. Even if his recent visit (November 3 to 8) did not achieve all its objectives there had been some “positive outcomes.”
In Myanmar UN human rights envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro met with the foreign and labour ministers in the junta's capital of Naypyidaw. The labour minister handles “relations” with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who continues to be under house arrest as she has for many years.
This said human rights activists and foreign diplomats stationed in Myanmar remain sceptical about the Burmese generals real intentions.
“We do not believe that a fundamental shift has occurred in the regime's attitude to embrace substantive reconciliation,” US envoy to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said.
“How can anyone believe that the generals are serious about dialogue with the opposition and a transition towards democracy if they do not free Suu Kyi and stop arresting members of her party,” the National League for Democracy ( NLD), said an activist on condition of anonymity.
According to a NLD spokesperson, Kachin state NLD member Nay Win and Bhamo township NLD member Ba Myint received a two-year sentence on Friday after being tried in camera in Myitkyina and Bhamo prisons respectively, charged with causing public alarm and disrupting the public peace.
In Yangon’s busy Thiri Mingalar fruit and vegetable market police arrested three men handing out anti-government flyers.
The health of monk U Gambira, a leader of the Alliance of All Burma Buddhist Monk (AABBM), is also causing concern.
Arrested for his role in the September protests, some evidence suggests that he might have been tortured, said AABBM chief Bo Kyi, who wants Mr Pinheiro to meet the jailed monk.
Like the crackdown propaganda has been stepped up in order to discredit the opposition.
State-owned papers splashed across their front pages an article signed by Pao rebels, an ethnic group living in Shan state, in which the latter say that the Aung San Suu Kyi does not represent them.
This comes after the Nobel Prize laureate called on the government and all of Myanmar’s parties, including those representing ethnic minorities, to make a commitment to dialogue.
