Left Flank

I'm so relieved Beijing's technocrats can listen to world opinion about capital punishment: ask for toleration and humanity, and get a needle.

Lethal injections were considered "more humane and will eventually be used in all intermediate people's courts", the China Daily quoted Jiang Xingchang, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, as saying.

China has been slowly reforming the death penalty system after several high-profile wrongful convictions raised public anger.

The Supreme People's Court last year took back its power of final approval on death penalties, relinquished to provincial high courts in a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s.

But the China Daily did not suggest any quick end to China's use of the death penalty.

"We cannot talk about abolishing or controlling the use of death sentences in the abstract without considering ground realities and social security conditions," it quoted Chief Justice Xiao Yang as saying, adding that there was a strong belief in the concept of "an eye for an eye and a life for a life".

The death penalty is imposed for dozens of crimes, including non-violent offences such as corruption and tax fraud.

I guess someone missed the news about how inhumane lethal injections can be, but perhaps, for Beijing, that's an endorsement. Or, perhaps, Beijing believes it's slowly complying with the UN General Assembly's call for a moratorium. But then again, it's probably also a whole lot greener cleaner

Amnesty International’s Response to Burmese Repression (Requires Real Player)

TNR's Joshua Kurlantzick has two prescriptions for Myanmar: smart sanctions and people power.

Myanmar's problems seem to be a form of Dutch disease. After independence, civilian rulers implemented a government-directed socialist economic plan. In 1962, rival elites staged a coup, and Myanmar hasn't know civilian rule again since. So, Kurlantzick's smarter sanction's plan seems well-designed to inflict harm on those who have ruined the Burmese economy most.

With a North Korean-like regime that doesn't care about the world, but is dependent on it for critical items, you have to hit them where they hurt. Long reported to be ailing, Than Shwe flies out of the country for medical care in neighboring Southeast Asian nations. His family also frequently heads outside the country, likely for shopping trips--during the September protests, the senior general parked his family in Bangkok. Burmese businesspeople with alleged close links to the generals also reportedly have extensive bank accounts in neighboring states.

So, smarter sanctions could include efforts to prevent certain top generals from accessing nearby health care and luxury shopping. They also could crack down on bank accounts in Southeast Asia linked to the junta, depriving the junta of the money they need to continue living lavishly in their new jungle capital, Naypyidaw.

Unlike broader sanctions, smarter sanctions might enjoy the support of critical countries in the region. Speaking with some regional diplomats this week in Southeast Asia, several worried that cutting off access to the junta's health care would be viewed as unnecessarily harsh. «Why not just go the old way, and assassinate him?» one asked me. Still, even in the countries around Burma, the level of frustration is rising. And China was willing to work with the U.S. before in toughening financial controls on Kim Jong-Il--Macau is a special administrative region of China--and might be willing to do so again. Individual Southeast Asian nations, meanwhile, could back smarter sanctions without all having to agree amongst themselves. To take broader measures, all countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have to agree--unlikely, given that ASEAN itself contains regimes, like Laos and Vietnam, which are hardly examples of protecting human rights.

Targeted sanctions also might help unite Burmese themselves. Inside Burma, many opposition activists, including Suu Kyi, support tough Western sanctions. But other Burmese I've spoken with criticize the sanctions as making Burma's humanitarian emergency worse. Smarter sanctions, though, probably would spark no such divide. And before the junta can arrest even more of the opposition, the world needs to wise up.

That's fine as far as ridding Myanmar of its junta is concerned, but creating self-government is trickier. And, all Kurlantzick can do is argue, that the Burmese are not incapable of pulling it off.

...the Burma exception argument falls apart on examination. The idea that Burma's ethnic divisions would preclude democracy is only convincing if you ignore the history of its giant neighbor, India. The ethnic violence in postcolonial India was worse than that in Burma, yet the country has held together to build a powerful democracy. Similarly, Indonesia, a vast archipelago of ethnic groups, has managed to form the most vibrant democracy in the region by embracing federalism. Even Cambodia, another diverse society plagued by civil war, now has a stable, if flawed, democracy in place. True, Burma suffered under the British, but it was not a «peculiarly debilitating colonial legacy,» as Thant Myint-U claims. India, Malaysia, Kenya, and other colonies suffered without losing all prospects for democratization.

The second point in the Burma exception argument--that no opposition network exists--dissolves after a glimpse at Burmese history, not to mention the last few weeks. During the 1988 protests, the country witnessed a vast flowering of unions, print publications, and other organizations. Even during the bleakest times, Burmese continued debating the nation's fate, though more quietly: Several years ago, I sat in the corner of a noodle shop in Rangoon and listened to a local publisher and his friends hash out politics. And, just this week, numerous Burmese found creative ways to get photos and stories about the crackdown to news outlets around the world. As for religious groups, the power and organization of the Buddhist monks was on full display during last month's marches. In fact, unlike many other authoritarian states, Burma has a recent history of democratic rule, memories of which would aid a transition back to democracy. Between independence in 1948 and the military coup in 1962, Burma enjoyed a democratic government and a period of strong economic growth. Even more recently, in 1990, the Burmese people participated in a real election, in which the junta's proxy party was defeated by the opposition National League for Democracy. (The junta simply refused to turn over power.)

As these examples suggest, the central problem with the Burma exception argument is that it lays the blame for Burma's problems squarely with the people, when, in fact, the problem is the junta. Contrary to Thant Myint-U's argument that the junta is less repressive than former nearby dictatorships, it is far more brutal. In Thailand, for example, after a crackdown on demonstrators in 1992 in Bangkok, the military heads willingly sat down with the protest leaders at an audience in front of the king and then gave way to civilian rule. The Indonesian dictator Suharto paved the way for democracy by stepping down after massive civilian protests in 1998. In Burma, the junta has created a situation in which brutality is more likely by isolating soldiers from civilians in a separate, military-only education system and by moving the capital to the middle of the jungle. You are a lot more likely to shoot at people you've never had any contact with.

Another factor that the Burma exception argument doesn't consider is the halfhearted and frequently craven policies of the international community. For decades since the 1962 coup, democratic nations could not decide whether to isolate or embrace the Burmese military. The United States and Great Britain courted the generals until the late '80s--Queen Elizabeth served tea to crazed former junta chief Ne Win--and then sanctioned them in the '90s. Burma's closest neighbors, dependent on the country's oil, timber, and gas, recently have been unwavering in their support; India, seeking to counterbalance China's power in the area, has reached out to the generals, selling them arms. And China is the regime's major aid provider and has blocked tougher U.N. actions on Burma. The unwillingness of these nations to stand up to the junta has demoralized Burma's reformers.

That's a lot of problems for one nation to deal with, and probably more than the international community can focus on with any degree of commitment for any period of time.

It's all a question of priorities.