New Mandala

The U.S. Navy shadowing a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying weapons bound for Burma is the stuff of potboiler thrillers. Yet for two of the world’s most reclusive and repressive states, the only unique feature of these events is the fact that anyone is taking notice. For several years, Burma’s ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and Kim Jong Il’s government in North Korea have been slowly strengthening their diplomatic and military ties, largely beneath the international radar.

- Extracted from Kay Seok and David Scott Mathieson, “Allies in Paranoia and Repression”, Far Eastern Economic Review, 3 July 2009.  The authors are the North Korea and Burma researchers respectively for Human Rights Watch.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is arriving in Myanmar today. He will be here for 24 hours. He will land in Yangon with his entourage of about thirty people at around the same time that the court will reconvene for Aung San Suu Kyi and John Yettaw’s trials. Details of the UN Chief’s jam-packed schedule are unavoidably murky. Insider sources confirm that within his short time in Myanmar, Ban Ki-Moon intends to:

• Visit Senior General Than Shwe in Naypyidaw;
• Fly down to the Ayeyarwaddy Delta region to assess humanitarian relief efforts one year after Cyclone Nargis;
• Visit Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Insein Prison / possibly in court;
• Attend an event in Yangon to commemorate Nargis and thank the Myanmar community for their contributions to relief and humanitarian aid.

Ban Ki-moon’s visit to Myanmar comes, of course, with the inevitable criticism from the Burma watchers and members of the exile community who promote isolationism as a strategy. An article in the Times quotes Zoya Phan of Burma Campaign UK as saying:

We have had 20 years of UN envoys going back and forth to Burma and nothing to show for it…We need Ban Ki Moon to personally take the lead, but he must deliver practical results, such as the release of all political prisoners. Talking to the generals is a means to an end, but so far the UN seems to treat talks alone as a success.

I disagree with this type of attitude. Talks alone are a success. While there have indeed been a series of UN envoys to Myanmar, a visit by the Secretary-General is a considerably more substantial engagement. When Ban Ki-moon arrived in Myanmar in May 2008 just after Cyclone Nargis hit, he was the first Secretary-General to visit Myanmar in 44 years. During that visit, he managed to convince Than Shwe to ease restrictions and allow international aid to pour into Myanmar to help survivors of the cyclone.

The idea that “talks” shouldn’t begin until all political prisoners are released and the Lady is allowed to campaign freely around the country is unrealistic. Negotiations are presently non-existent. At this stage, we don’t know who would be sitting at the table, where that table might be, what size the table is, and even what shape the table will be. It might sound silly, but these are important factors. Conditioning talks (about the conditions of talks) on large political concessions is not a smart way to deal with the generals who run Myanmar.

If they don’t get to see The Lady proselytizing in the streets and democracy flourishing overnight, the detractors and isolationists will surely claim that Ban Ki-moon’s visit only “legitimized”‘ the government. While after tomorrow there may not be large explicit agreements, what goes on behind closed doors will certainly be significant.

Ban Ki-moon is coming off some recent criticism for being “too soft” in tricky diplomatic situations in Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Last week, his Special Envoy to Myanmar, Mr. Ibrahim Gambari, was in country to prepare for this upcoming trip. Mr. Gambari would not have advised the Secretary-General to visit Myanmar unless if he was positive that there would be positive outcomes.

We will have to wait until at least Sunday to find out…

UPDATE (3 July 2009): Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial is adjourned until 10 July, as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrives in Yangon. The trial was set to resume today after a month long delay.

The Nation online provides two ways to love Thailand.

New Mandala readers who prefer their coverage in the Thai language will appreciate this translation of a recent post.  That post highlights the ongoing plight of Daranee “Da Torpedo” Charnchoengsilpakul who is on trial for lese majeste.  Does anyone know what has happened since the court was closed last week?  How is she faring?

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) is deeply embroiled in the ongoing circus of lese majeste accusations.  Jonathan Head, the BBC correspondent in Bangkok and FCCT First Vice President, has long been singled out for attention.  But now we hear that the entire FCCT board has been accused of insulting the Thai monarchy.  The Nation and Manager both have useful reports, and there is some commentary at Bangkok Pundit and Political Prisoners in Thailand.

Where to begin?

It is worth emphasising that the board of the FCCT includes many of Thailand’s most prominent journalists.   These are the people who help keep the world informed about developments in Thailand and neighbouring countries.  They work under often difficult conditions and produce a steady stream of news and commentary that all of us rely on when trying to make sense of events.

Throughout Thailand’s difficult past few years the FCCT has admirably sought to provide a platform for a range of different perspectives on local issues.  Publishing, and re-publishing, a largely positive account of King Bhumibol’s life has not precluded, say, the hosting of a press conference that launched a petition calling for the reform of the lese majeste law.  The types of events and publications that the FCCT supports are surely in the best interests of a free society.  In its own words the FCCT “advocates press freedom as a cornerstone of civil society in emerging democracies and is a vital venue for an open exchange of information.”

I’m confident that if push really comes to shove then the FCCT will be able to use its influence and prestige to defend members of its board against the lese majeste accusation.  Nonetheless this episode is a serious escalation in Thailand’s internal war about the appropriate role of journalists and “foreigners”, more generally, in analysing Thai society.

If the goal of this lese majeste accusation is to stop critical commentary about the monarchy then, I’m afraid, it will likely have  the opposite effect.  In future reporting and analysis this episode will just be added to the long list of efforts that have already been made to silence non-conforming voices.  It is also a sure money-bet that any further escalation in attacks on foreign journalists in Thailand will generate more ill-will.  It may also encourage some of those who have been quite restrained in their commentary to reconsider their options.

It was, as I recall, a former Bangkok-based correspondent who penned The Economist’s explosive piece at the end of 2008.  The last thing the Abhisit government really needs is for an exodus of well-credentialed and highly-experienced correspondents who — from the comfort and safety of London, or Singapore, or Sydney, or wherever — can continue explaining Thailand to the world.

I fail to see how this mass attack on journalists serves the interests of Thailand or, dare I say it, the palace.  Prime Minister Abhisit could simplify things a great deal by limiting the scope for concerned citizens to make these very serious accusations.  But if he is feeling really brave he could go even further and use this muddle-headed accusation as an opportunity to extricate his government from the clutches of those who have no time for free expression.

Now that would be something worth reporting.

My sense is that on New Mandala we could, in this our fourth year, do a better job of identifying and explicitly dealing with a wider range of social and political issues in mainland Southeast Asia.  It’s not that we do a bad job; it’s just that sometimes we don’t step back from the immediate issues to consider the hardest questions.  More generally, we are still prepared to put important regional issues in the “too hard basket” where, I’m afraid, they may remain for decades.

Recently I invited input from New Mandala readers about Thailand-related issues that are under-studied or even un-studied.  It garnered a productive set of responses and a number of interesting, and potentially important, threads for further exploration.  It was a great start.

To build on that previous effort I have now put together my list of fifty-two questions for the study of mainland Southeast Asia.

A list of this type will only make sense if I don’t actually know the answers.  I can assure you that in all these cases I really don’t know — even if I have hunches or think I know parts of the answers.  I hope you will want to add your own questions.  Or you may even want to have a go at answering some of these ones yourself.

Obviously not everybody will like the questions but I still feel that they are all worth asking.  Some of these are, I’m sure, unanswerable and some of them, until now, have been unaskable.

I offer them as a modest service to the field.  All are posed in a spirit of scholarly inquiry. [Read more →]

There was a flurry of media excitement last week when it was announced that a prehistoric reptile had been granted a highly auspicious royal title.

The ancient land turtle was named “Basilochelys macrobios, in honour of His Majesty the King” according to The Nation. Drawing on my longstanding expertise with scientific nomenclature, I translated the royal turtle title as follows:

Basilicus (Latin)= royal/kingly

Chelys (Latin) = tortoise/turtle

Macro (Latin) = long

Bios (Greek) = life

So, as The Nation and many other sources pointed out, Basilochelys macrobios can be popularly referred to as  the “Long Live the King” turtle.

The Director General of the Mineral Resources Department, Adisak Thongkaimook, helpfully pointed out that  the “Long Live the King”  species “roamed the Earth about 150 million years ago in the late Jurassic period”. It is now extinct.

For those interested in finding out more about Basilochelys macrobios, and who wouldn’t be, here is a more detailed scientific description:

A large cryptodiran turtle, Basilochelys macrobios n. gen. n. sp. is described from the latest Jurassic-earliest Cretaceous Phu Kradung Formation of NE Thailand, on the basis of skull, shell and other postcranial elements. Basilochelys presents a combination of primitive and derived characters. The derived characters include sculptured skull roof and shell surface; deeply embedded canalis caroticus internus; foramen posterius canalis carotici interni completely surrounded by pterygoid; neural formula of 6>4<6<6<6<6; anteroposteriorly expanded eleventh and twelfth marginal scutes extending onto the suprapygal and costal plates; narrow vertebral scutes; plastron sutured to the carapace, with large and wide anterior and posterior lobes, long and narrow bridge, very narrow axillary and inguinal notch; wide entoplastron; humeropectoral sulcus located on the posterior part of the entoplastron; anal notch absent. This taxon is placed in Trionychoidae and considered as the most basal member of that group.

I understand that this company has just received a big order from Bangkok.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about contract farming, in Thailand and other countries. One interesting case that I came across was that of baby corn. In a report published almost 20 years ago veteran journalist and activist Sanitsuda Ekachai wrote about the fate of Thai peasants who had been caught up in this particular form of contract farming:

A one rai plot of land grows 30,000 corn plants. [Really? That's about 19 plants per square metre. Pretty crowded!] That means 30,000 tassels to strip and each plant bears three cobs, so that’s 90,000 baby corns to peel off… At home the family will gather round the piles of fresh, green corns to slit the husks with a knife, remove the corn silk and pull out the prized, pearl white vegetable they have worked to hard for - a finger sized corn, perfect for canning. To meet the factory deadline, it is not uncommon for the family to husk the cop until well after midnight before going out before dawn for another day’s work in the fields.  [I've taken this Sanitsuda quote from an article by David Burch in Globlization and Agri-Food Restructuring 1996.]

For this hard work the farmers were reported to receive only about 14 baht per day. Another source suggests about 16 baht per day. [Citing Burch again.]

A more recent source also suggests that returns from baby corn are relatively modest. This is from foodmarketexchange.com:

Baby corn is an important commercial plant and export item of Thailand. Baby corn fresh, frozen and canned becomes more and more popular both in Thailand and abroad. It earns the country more than 1 billion baht each year. With a short period of cultivation, only 45-60 days, farmers can reap the crop and fetch 2,000-3,000 baht per rai. Also, there are few pests to disturb the plant. Moreover, parts of baby corn trees after harvests can be used as animal feed, especially for meat and milk cows.  In the global trade frame, Thailand is estimated to account for 80 percent of the world trade volume of baby corn. In 2000, Thailand exported fresh baby corn to approximately 30 countries, and preserved baby corn products to almost 100 countries. In 2000,Thailand dominated the world baby corn trade with both fresh and canned products, thus having earned 1,731,942,373 baht from the export volume of 58,536,378 kilograms. The U.S. is Thailand’s largest export market for canned baby corn, accounting for 42.75 percent of Thailand’s total export volume and value of baby corn. As for fresh baby corn markets, Malaysia is the biggest importing countries with the share of around 50.70 percent of the export volume.

3000 baht after 60 days is 50 baht per day from one rai. Still seems to be a rather modest return given the labour involved. How many rai of baby corn can a farmer reasonably manage?

Perhaps there is a New Mandala reader out there with some insight into the economics of baby corn cultivation.  Baby corn has become a significant export crop for Thailand so there must be something that makes it attractive for farmers to grow.

In the wake of the April 2009 crushing of the Red Shirts, there was some speculation that Abhisit may be tempted to call an election sooner rather than later. I discussed this with a seasoned inside observer of Thai politics and he assured me that Abhisit would only call an election when he and his backers were sure they could win.

The Pheua Thai victories last week (in Sakon Nakhon 3) and this week (in Sisaket 1) suggest that a general election may be delayed as long as possible.  According to Matichon Online’s unofficial figures Pheua Thai scored 123,557 votes compated to Chart Thai Pattana’s 75,420 votes. That’s 62 percent of the vote to Pheua Thai, almost exactly the same percentage as they scored last week in Sakon Nakhon 3. In the 2007 general election PPP scored about 52 percent in Sisaket 1, so they will be celebrating a 10 percent increase.

The Pheua Thai/Thaksin brand still has considerable electoral potency. As the unsuccessful candidate lamented: “even a lamp-post could win for Pheua Thai.”

I have to say it is childish of the Burmese generals to dream about acquiring nuclear technology, since they can’t even provide regular electricity in Burma…

- Extracted from a wide-ranging interview with Thakhin Chan Tun, former Burmese Ambassador to North Korea: “Burma wants the bomb”, The Irrawaddy, 27 June 2009.

New Mandala readers who pay attention to such matters will already know that there has been recent analysis by some well-placed figures on the topic of the Burma-North Korea nuclear nexus.  You can read tentative appraisals of this issue in pieces by Andrew Selth (February 2009 – he also wrote a longer report on Burmese nuclear ambitions in 2007) and Bertil Lintner (December 2008 and June 2009).  Of course, commentary on this issue goes back years.  A selection of earlier reporting takes us to July 2007, May 2004 and July 2001.

This week as a North Korean ship with a mysterious cargo apparently heads towards Yangon TIME explains “Why Burma may be North Korea’s best friend”.  In that current analysis the nuclear issue lurks in the shadows.

Comments from readers are, as always, very welcome here.