Myanmar has been lead by military rule since 1962. How has the Burmese government evolved over the last 45 years, and how has it been able to maintain power despite the people’s democratic election in 1990?

The military deposed the democratically elected government in 1962, and General Ne Win initiated a program known as the “Burmese Way of Socialism” that began to impoverish the country, despite its abundant natural resources. There were numerous student uprisings during this period, the most dramatic of which came in 1988. That led to a military coup against Ne Win, and the current junta took power. Strangely, they made the mistake of calling for elections, but when they lost them to a civilian political party, the National League for Democracy, they refused to honor the election and jailed the popular leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She remains under house arrest.

Since that time, the military has been able to maintain power through brutal repression, jailing many people who dare to speak out. Indeed, when I was there last year, nearly everyone I met had been in jail or otherwise suffered under the regime. The regime has also engaged in brutal campaigns against tribal people in resource-rich hill areas, which has given the military resources to maintain power. Some of these campaigns are genocidal in scale. The regime is xenophobic and highly nationalistic.

Many of those leading the protest of the military junta currently in power are Buddhist monks, and the demonstrators as a whole have been voicing their disapproval peacefully. How do you think their role and the violence against them will affect the pressure on the dictatorship to hand over power to the democratically-elected government? Do you foresee a situation similar to India’s civil disobedience under British rule?

The monks maintain a special role in Burmese society as the guardians of Buddhism. No doubt the reason the regime took so long to crush the current protests was that they did not want to be seen harming monks, but they did so anyway. It certainly cuts into their legitimacy, but that does not seem to be necessary for their continued rule.
The parallel is not Ghandhian civil disobedience, but the Burmese resistance against the British, in which monks played a major role. Indeed, in some cases monks used violence to resist colonial rule.

Protests in 1988 were violently repressed by the Burmese military, killing over 3000 people, but they paved the way for democratic elections two years later. Can the current uprising finally bring about change, or is the current regime too powerful and entrenched to be forced to give up power?

President Bush has announced increased economic sanctions against the Burmese What if any affect do you see these sanctions having? And with numerous reported human rights abuses, how can U.N. members like China and Russia continue to support the regime?

Sanctions only work if they are multilateral and have the support of the target country’s neighbors. China remains the key diplomatic patron which will block further sanctions and undermine those that are in place. Most of the neighbors think that we ought to get rid of the sanctions. Thus, it is unlikely sanctions can be effective. At the same time, the sanctions do give moral support to many in Myanmar, even if they do hurt the economy.
A new development is “smart sanctions” which target the regime’s leaders personally. These may have more of an effect, but with China as an alternative place for leaders to hide their money and obtain benefits, we simply lack the leverage to guarantee these will work.