Will It Be A Smooth And Healthy Birth?

By Saneitha Nagani It was said that to a woman having a baby can be one of the most exciting and rewarding events of a woman s life. This also must be true so on the assumption that the conception of the baby in itself was the result of bonds between the woman and her partner were built on love and compassion and not on the use of force such as rape and it was not an unwanted pregnancy of any sort. In the same analogy, bringing about change in the country from the military dictatorship to a much fairer and just society with democratic characteristics will also be the event that will be most exciting and rewarding to the people of Burma. As Daw Suu has emphasised, Burma today is on the verge of change. But no one can safely say for sure whether those changes will be brought in a smooth and peaceful transition or whether it will be with violence and a lot of bloodletting in the process. So far we are relying on the health and genuineness of the change through some vague images we are getting from various reporting just as we did for the health of an unborn baby in the mother s womb by the images of the scans we got from the doctor s MIR machine. The question that needs to be asked is that because of the method of conception whether the woman should be allowed to give birth or what should she do after the baby is born. At this stage of pregnancy, whether the baby is the result of a consensual exchange between the man and the woman or she was forced to have it, then neither the doctor nor the midwife would be keen to recommend the woman to have a late-term abortion. Their concerns will be more towards bringing about the baby in a smooth and healthy birth. As the midwife of democratic change in Burma Daw Suu would be more concerned with the manner in which the changes are brought about than the legitimacy of Thein Sein s government or bringing about justice to the victims of the previous military regime. For Daw Suu, change by any means has never been an option. She has always made the point clear that, she did not believe in an armed struggle because it will perpetrate the tradition that he, who is best at wielding arms, wields power. She also emphasised that Even if the democracy movement were to succeed through force of arms, it would leave in the minds of the people the idea that whoever has greater armed might wins in the end. That will not help democracy. What has been happening in Libya now is the proof of the opposite of what Daw Suu believed in her quest for freedom and democracy in Burma. She must be willing to take the path of least resistance and grab the opportunity with both hands to bring about changes she believed in for the country. Sooner or later Daw Suu also has to confront with the issue of introducing changes in the 2008 Constitution and the question of the legitimacy of the government which was formed under that same Constitution. Recently, she has come out calling for changes to the military-drafted constitution. In a speech given on her first political trip since ending a boycott of the country s political system last year and announcing plans to run for Parliament she mentioned that, There are certain laws which are obstacles to the freedom of the people and we will strive to abolish these laws within the framework of the parliament. She said she wants to revise the 2008 military-drafted constitution that gives the military wide-ranging powers, including the ability to appoint key cabinet members, take control of the country in a state emergency and occupy a quarter of the seats in

parliament. Unlike the Pigs in George Orwell s Animal Farm Daw Suu s changes to the Constitution of Burma would be the opposite of what the Pigs did to The Seven Commandments . The way I see it, if Daw Suu is not going to pursue to get rid of the mischief and defect sections in the present 2008 constitution and go along with the government once she became a Parliamentarian after she has been elected in April by-elections then it would seem that she and her party the National League for Democracy (NLD) has acquiesced to those laws. These laws are not much different from the laws that the Taliban in Afghanistan had decreed on women who were the rape victims and who for the sake of escaping from further punishment had to marry the men who raped them in the first place. The laws under the military regime neither makes sense nor conforms with the general principles of laws as recognised by civilised nations. They are drafted by the military for the military and to sustain their rule; one-sided and self-serving just as the laws decreed by the Taliban gave men unequal powers and unjust laws so that they can rape the women whenever they feel like it and do not have to face the consequences for their actions under these laws. According to their constitution the military in Burma can stage a military coup whenever they deem it necessary for them to do so. There is neither checks nor balances just plain raw power power that comes out of the barrel of the gun, that is all. Let us stretch our imagination a bit further. For the sake of argument say that the changes are brought about peacefully and we have the birth of a new nation through this peaceful transition , could we or should we expect a healthy baby born without difficulty? Although one can say there are changes taking place in Burma it is by no means near what we could expect. Neither are they changes that will usher in a new democratic form of government overnight. It is midwife and the doctor telling the woman in labour to push, push when there was very little or no dilation big enough for the baby s head to come through. There is some opening, if one can called that an opening anyway President Thein Sein may have extended an invitation for Burmese exiles living abroad to come back home in public and because there was no legal basis to act upon it for those who were either foolish enough or eager to garb the opportunity to do so seems to be having difficulties with the authorities at the airport or with the local authorities in their home towns. These are quite common occurrence and when laws like the need to inform local authorities about overnight visitor s to the local authorities gave them opportunity to squeeze money out of Burmese returnees. To say for sure that the country is opening up, having such petty laws makes a mockery of the whole system. The other odd thing is that, while people who were known to have been put away for crimes such as high treason (but never admitted that there was such a crime and persons involved have been put away under economic crimes and corruption) have been released without conditions but some who were put away on charges that were not proven to the extent that they were guilty of committing without the benefit of doubt or at best because of their tenuous link to what the military regime regarded as a crimes under their unjust laws were not released because they were not regarded as prisoners of conscience . It does make a mockery of the system and it shows us that we may still have a long way yet to go for our real glasnost and perestroika in Burma. As the woman has to go through three stages in the birth of a child, opening up of Burma and progressing towards democratic change may also have to go through these stages as well. In a child birth the first stage of labour is said to be by far the longest and may last many hours. Burma, it

seems to be in this stage where not many can help and neither Daw Suu nor President Thein Sein were willing to tell the public what sort of understanding they have reached, how long will it take for them to act upon those things that they have agreed and in what way the people might help towards change. At the second stage not only there is a dilation of 10 cm in the cervix but also the contractions of the uterus have propelled the baby s head downwards into the birth canal that the mother can now actively help in the delivery of the baby. After those two stages when the baby is out now for the first time the baby has to begin breathing air for itself. Until the moment of birth the baby has been receiving oxygen from its mother s blood, transferred across the placenta. Likewise, the country, in the aftermath of change, will have to breathe on its own like the placenta there is no military regime to transfer the country s resources to the government. As at the third stage of the birth of a baby there is to be a final stage when the placenta and membranes are expelled then New Burma, free from the military dictatorship, also has to get rid of those who have been responsible for various crimes. That will be the real test of the changes that are said to be taking place in Burma. The question for us is, Can we close the door without facing the past? I am not a social scientist to say for sure that we could move on without confronting the past. A belief that, the awareness of the past evil can inoculate a population against repetition can be a form of social catharsis but there is a variety of ways that some kind of closure can be achieved as well. Daw Suu, when she was asked in an interview with Alan Clements whether she can guarantee that there will be no criminal changes against the members of the military regime, she said that, I will never make any personal guarantees. I will never speak as an individual about such things. It is only for the NLD to speak as an organisation a group that represents the people. But I do believe that truth and reconciliation go together. Once the truth has been admitted, forgiveness is far more possible. Denying the truth will not bring about forgiveness, neither will it dissipate the anger in those who have suffered. As for the vision of a Truth and Reconciliation Council in Burma after it regains its second independence Daw Suu said that, I think in every country which has undergone the kind of traumatic experience that we have in Burma, there will be a need for truth and reconciliation. I don t think that people will really thirst for vengeance once they have been given access to the truth. But the fact that they are denied access to the truth simply stokes the anger and hatred in them. That their sufferings have not been acknowledged makes people angry. That is one of the great differences between SLORC and ourselves. We do not think that there is anything wrong with saying we made a mistake and that we are sorry. For the country s sake, I hope that changes taking place in Burma are genuine and like the birth of a child it may have to go through different stages but in the end the people in Burma should have a happy, healthy social systems where everybody is equal before the law, their property rights are fully protected and their human rights respected. The military may have acted as an Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in a patient infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) - killing its own people and protecting the interests of the Chinese and a handful of their leaders but it will be a test for them as well to accept the people as their equals and their benefactors. Our hope is that the birth will be smooth, no breech birth with the woman needing episiotomy to widen the birth canal or needing the obstetrician to deliver the baby by caesarean section. END