Myanmar News Links: Britain to wade into Myanmar's modernisation

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Date

July 15, 2013 - 9:48AM

Myanmar President Thein Sein holding a meeting in preparation for the approaching Cyclone Mahasen, ahead of his US visit.

Myanmar President Thein Sein will meet with British PM David Cameron this week. Photo: MYANMAR NEWS AGENCY

Britain will offer Myanmar military training and official assistance to tackle its internal conflicts when President Thein Sein meets David Cameron in London on Monday.

Hugo Swire, the Foreign Office minister of state, said that Britain was determined to take a leading role in helping Myanmar to develop a more democratic system and resolve ethnic tensions.

Pro-democracy organisations in Myanmar claim that the regime has maintained a repressive military apparatus.

In particular, the Foreign Office has sought to use its historic experience in the former colony, then known as Burma, to defuse tensions between the military-backed government and Rohingya Muslims. Clashes between the Rohingya and Buddhist radicals with close links to the government have left hundreds dead over the past year, while more than 140,000 people remain displaced across Rakhine state.

"We don't underestimate how much needs to be done in Burma but it is critical we are engaged in helping the Burmese undertake changes," Mr Swire said.

"The right way to proceed is to have the Burmese here and to send our officials over there to help them through their difficulties."

Thein Sein has called for religious tolerance and the former general has dismissed as "fabrication" allegations that Myanmar's army colluded in the violence. However, official reports into the clashes alleged that the Muslim population in the east of the country was not native to Myanmar but imported from Bengali areas under the Raj. Many Rohingya are denied citizenship to this day.

Mr Swire said he confronted that view, with Foreign Office records "stretching back centuries" to show the Muslim community should be viewed as an established part of Myanmar.

Following a request made to Mr Cameron by the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and a visit to Myanmar by the outgoing chief of the defence staff, General Sir David Richards, a defence attache will be appointed in Rangoon. The new post is designed to oversee the establishment of military-to-military contacts between Myanmar and Britain's armed forces.

Myanmar's military staff will be given training in human rights and the law of armed conflict from their British counterparts, reviving a relationship that goes back centuries.

Pro-democracy organisations in Myanmar claim that the regime has maintained a repressive military and security apparatus. Baroness Kinnock of Hollyhead, representing the Burma Campaign UK non-governmental organisation, said Mr Cameron was rewarding a leader who had not delivered on promised changes.

"William Hague and David Cameron should send Thein Sein away with a flea in his ear, not a pat on his back," she said. A petition organised by the campaign group Avaaz calling on Britain and France to issue an ultimatum on the violence to Thein Sein has drawn more than one million signatures.

Campaigners will line Whitehall with black tombstones during the meeting.

Mr Swire said the campaigners were misreading the intentions of the Government, which maintained a close working relationship with Miss Suu Kyi. "It is wrong to think we are not keeping up the pressure on Burma," he said.

Officials said Mr Cameron had no plans to follow President Barack Obama and succumb to Burmese pressure to refer to the country as Myanmar, the name chosen by the junta in the Nineties.

The Telegraph, UK