Burmese Justice

Smarter sanctions against the Burmese generals after their latest sentence of Suu Kyi.

AUGUST 13, 2009
The Wall Street Journal

Tuesday's sentencing by a Burmese court of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three years of hard labor is a fresh reminder of the ruling junta's cruelty. That the sentence was then magnanimously reduced to an 18-month extension of her house arrest is a reminder of its cynicism.

Ms. Suu Kyi is Burma's rightful prime minister, having been elected in a vote overturned by the junta in 1990. The latest verdict ensures that the regime will get through parliamentary elections scheduled for next year without her participation. It's also a signal to the world that the junta isn't about to reach for any reset buttons, even as the Obama administration attempts to do so through a policy review that has being dragging on since February.

As the Obama team ponders its position, it's useful to consider the policies that have come before. The United States has imposed investment sanctions on Burma since 1997. Those sanctions have multiplied along with the junta's brutality. In 2003, after an assassination attempt on Ms. Suu Kyi, Congress passed the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act which banned imports from Burma into the U.S. In 2008, following violent suppression of the previous year's peaceful "saffron revolution," the JADE act placed sanctions on Burmese gems. President George W. Bush also signed targeted financial sanctions aimed at individuals in the Burmese military elite and their associated businesses.

Burma's junta has mostly shrugged off Western sanctions thanks to billions in sales of natural gas to China and Thailand, along with sales of timber and gems. Some of those sanctions have achieved little except to further impoverish the Burmese people and should be lifted. But the targeted sanctions have been more effective and could be tightened. No less valuable are Burmese language broadcasts of Radio Free Asia, which are vital in breaking the regime's monopoly on information.

Now the junta is becoming as much a menace to its neighborhood as it already is to its people. Burma is getting nuclear technology from Russia and possibly North Korea. Burmese and North Korean officials have signed an agreement on military cooperation, according to reports from the Burmese exile community. In July, a North Korean ship heading to Burma—presumably bearing arms—was tailed by a U.S. warship until it turned back. Burma is also a hub for drug and human trafficking, taking in as much as $2 billion annually from exports of narcotics like opium and methamphetamine, according to U.S. Congressional reports.

In response, the Obama Administration and Democratic allies in Congress seem inclined to introduce more sweeteners into the mix. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted last month at the possibility of "investment" and "other exchanges" for Burma if Ms. Suu Kyi was freed. Today, U.S. Senator Jim Webb will travel to Burma, the first visit by a U.S. Senator in over a decade. Not a bad photo-op for a regime that last year impounded humanitarian aid for more than 100,000 victims of Cyclone Nargis.

The danger here is that the junta will use these visits, along with next year's elections, to generate a chimera of democracy—generously subsidized by foreign aid—on the model of Hun Sen's regime in nearby Cambodia. For the sake of Ms. Suu Kyi and every other imprisoned Burmese dissident, we hope the Obama Administration doesn't conclude from all this that now is the time to engage