WASHINGTON — President Obama today will press Myanmar to build on measures to allow greater political freedom when he becomes the first sitting U.S. president to visit the former military regime.
“If we waited to engage until they had achieved a perfect democracy, my suspicion is that we would be waiting an awful long time,” Obama told reporters Saturday in Bangkok, Thailand, the first stop on a three-day visit to Southeast Asia. “And one of the goals of this trip is to highlight some of the progress that has been made but also give voice to much greater progress that needs to be made in the future.”
In a daytime stop expected to last only six hours, Obama is to meet with Myanmar President Thein Sein in the former capital of Yangon. He’ll also visit opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s most popular political figure, at her lakeside home where she spent more than 15 years confined under house arrest.
Obama eased sanctions on Myanmar this year after Thein Sein engaged with his political opponents and eased media restrictions since his party won a 2010 election that ended five decades of direct military rule in the country, formerly known as Burma. The visit also reflects a legacy-building goal for a president about to enter a second term, whose early efforts at engagement and democratization have yielded mixed results.
Myanmar’s progress gives Obama “a good story to tell,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, vice president of global policy programs at the Asia Society in New York. “When we talk about Obama’s legacy it’s probably not going to be the Middle East and events there. It’s going to be Asia.”
At these stops and in a speech at the University of Yangon, as well as in meetings with members of civil society, Obama will link the prospect of increased U.S. assistance with evidence of further reforms. Steps include a full transition to civilian rule, reconciliation with ethnic minorities and the severing of military ties to North Korea, Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters in a briefing on Air Force One.
“Change can happen very fast if a spotlight is shone on what’s going on inside a country and if people believe their voices are heard around the world,” Obama said Saturday. “We understand that this is going to be a work in progress. If we see backsliding and slipping, we are in a position to respond appropriately.”
Thein Sein’s government on Saturday vowed to find a long-term solution to end violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine state near Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh that has killed about 180 people in the past month. It also pledged in a statement to review cases of remaining political prisoners by year’s end and invite the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to set up an office in the country.
“The government will take decisive action to prevent violent attacks against civilians,” according to the statement. “It will hold accountable the perpetrators of such attacks; it will work with the international community to meet the humanitarian needs of the people; and it will address contentious political dimensions, ranging from resettlement of displaced populations to granting of citizenship.”
Southeast Asian leaders meeting in Phnom Penh warned that the Rohingya’s plight could foment extremism that might destabilize the region. Many of Myanmar’s 64 million people view the 800,000 Rohingya living in the country as illegal migrants from what is now Bangladesh. They are denied citizenship and cannot travel freely in the country.
“If that issue is not handled well and effectively, there is a risk of radicalization, there is a risk of extremism, and that will not be of interest to anybody in the region,” Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, told reporters in Phnom Penh. “The international community has expressed concern.”
The Myanmar trip is sandwiched between Obama’s visits to Thailand and Cambodia, where he will join the regional meetings hosted by Asean. While Myanmar’s government said days before Obama’s visit that it granted amnesty to 452 prisoners, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said an undetermined number of political prisoners remain behind bars.
Obama’s trip “risks providing an undeserved seal of approval to the military-dominated government that is still violating human rights,” Brad Adams, the group’s Asia director, said in a statement. Obama also should publicly call on the government to end violence and discrimination against the Rohingya, he said.
The decision to visit Myanmar reflects Obama’s belief that his presence can “lock in” progress there, White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said in a speech Thursday in Washington.
“We are not going to miss this moment,” he said.
Nay Zin Latt, an adviser to President Thein Sein, said in an e-mail that Obama’s visit “will become a pull factor to attract foreign investments from the Western world” and is “really important and an indication of the improved relationship between Myanmar and the U.S.”
Situated on the Indian Ocean between China and India, Myanmar represents one of Asia’s last untapped frontier markets. The nation’s economy will expand 6.2 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund said last month.
The U.S. sees the shifting political climate in Myanmar as an opening for new investments, exports and relations as Obama looks to reassert power in a region increasingly reliant on China, the world’s second-largest economy.
The oil and gas sector accounted for 77 percent of the $3.8 billion in foreign investment in Myanmar from 2005 to 2010. ConocoPhillips and Chevron are scouting opportunities and Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are returning to the country for the first time in about 15 years. MasterCard last week reached an agreement with a local bank to accept international ATM cards for the first time.
The president’s visit has the backing of key Republicans in Congress.
“I want to commend him for going,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said of Obama’s visit. “I think it is an important step for him to take.”
The U.S. on Friday began easing a decade-long ban on imports from Myanmar, while still blocking jadeite and rubies. The Obama administration is also taking initial steps to resume military relations with Myanmar, through discussions about humanitarian aid and non-lethal military ties, a senior U.S. defense official said a day earlier.
“For Myanmar, Washington’s growing interest in the country is a welcome by-product of its political changes, and indeed a drive to diversify its foreign relations away from China is a plausible contributing factor to why the former military regime initiated the reforms,” said James Brazier, an analyst for IHS Global Insight, in an analysis.
At the same time, Obama can’t take too much credit for Myanmar’s shift, according to Michael Montesano, a visiting research fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies who studies Myanmar.
“At best what he can claim is that the U.S. has long been well-disposed to the reformers, and the U.S. has made an extra effort to ease Myanmar’s transition,” Montesano said. “He can claim credit for his administration paying a lot of attention to what’s going on there, spending a lot of time, sending good people” to engage.
— With assistance from Gopal Ratnam in Washington, Kevin Costelloe in Brussels and Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok.
