Easy money for Myanmar

Easy money for Myanmar

Myanmar announced this week it has convinced banks and international aid givers to make deals that clear away debts and open the country to potentially profitable business. Other countries will pay off billions of dollars owed to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). In return, Myanmar effectively gets a clean rating and a new line of credit. The international agencies and foreign businesses get a massive new opportunity to invest in Myanmar.

It seems a sweet deal all around. But the backroom deals that led to Monday's surprise announcement were free of all accountability. The governments that finance aid loans and projects concluded the agreements in secret. The government of Myanmar, while basking in the praise of its public acceptance of some democratic reform, was not even asked about mass abuses of the past, some of which are continuing.

It has become popular to refer to Myanmar as if 60 years of military dictatorship ended at a pen stroke and a general election. There are the bad days of tyranny by the Myanmar military, and then there is the new time, when political prisoners are freed and an elected parliament meets. It would be nice if this simplistic view of Myanmar were true. Unfortunately, the new regime under President Thein Sein still has a long way to go before his reforms result in a democratic and accountable Myanmar.

The programmes that encourage investment in post-dictatorship Myanmar are generally a good thing. The people of Myanmar, brutalised, beaten down and impoverished for three generations, will be helped by a new opportunity to join in building their country. But there is little that is positive about this week's debt forgiveness.

First, there was no examination of the conditions that allowed the military dictators to build a debt that clearly went against the interests of Myanmar and its people. The World Bank, ADB, Japan and Norway in particular did not try to study the past, to help to ensure it is never repeated.

More germane and pertinent is the lack of any guarantee, even a simple statement by the Myanmar government that it intends to end abuses that are ongoing. The aid agencies did not mention the continuing acquiescence of Myanmar in the international drug trade. And there was no mention of undoubted abuses of minorities by Thein Sein and his government _ abuses carried out as a matter of national policy.

Certainly, Myanmar deserves support in ascending from its dark days into the world community. But Myanmar's friends missed a golden opportunity to hold the government to standards.

Drug trafficking affects Thailand directly. So does abuse of Rohingya Muslims. Military attacks on Kachin, including aerial bombardments, hardly speak of national reconciliation.

Forgiving Myanmar its billions of dollars of debt built up by the military dictators is defensible only if there is accountability. Blind and greedy international lenders poured loans on a cruel regime. Starting new loans without any mention of continuing problems effectively makes such abuses acceptable by the Myanmar government and the international community.

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