Burma Debate Continues Outside Brussels Conference Hall

By THE IRRAWADDY

Heated exchanges at last week's Burma Day conference in Brussels continue to reverberate, with two leading participants locked in a dispute over charges of undemocratic and “fascist” behavior.

The conference, co-hosted by the European Commission and a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), was marked by lively discussion among the participants.

“Several ‘activists’ made spirited and substantive interventions throughout the day,” said Derek Tonkin, a former British ambassador to Thailand, in a letter to The Irrawaddy. “Their approach is not democratic, but fascist.”

Tonkin’s charges were challenged by Mark Farmaner, director of the London-based Burma Campaign-UK, who complained that he had been interrupted twice by one of the conference organizers when he spoke from the floor and that he had later been told he had no right to address the meeting. “Yet I get called a fascist,” said Farmaner in an e-mail reply to questions from The Irrawaddy.

Farmaner claimed that the “vast majority” of the participants in the conference were “promoting a basic agenda of engaging in the regime’s 2010 elections, playing down or even denying that the regime had been restricting aid to the [Irrawaddy] delta, and criticizing sanctions.

"Perhaps their anger is because even with the biased line-up their arguments didn’t carry the day."

Tonkin, now Chairman of Network Myanmar, said in the letter that the “incidence of intervention” by activist participants, “if anything, was tilted in their favor by the independent and unbiased chairmen of both the morning and afternoon sessions."

The Burma Campaign-UK charged in a press release that the European Commission had chosen conference speakers who largely opposed the policies of Burma’s democracy movement, even though the agenda focused on humanitarian and political issues in Burma. "EU Burma Day is always heavily biased in this way," the group said.

One Burmese participant, who requested anonymity, told The Irrawaddy: “That’s not true. I think the conference organizers this time tried to give time fairly to everyone to talk in open discussion. We mainly focused on the impact of Cyclone Nargis and on options for the country's political future."

A Burma Day conference in 2005 also sparked controversy. The organizers were accused by NGOs, trade union umbrella groups and others of inviting only Burmese regime sympathizers and excluding regime opponents. About 50 Burmese exiles traveled to Brussels to join pro-democracy groups in a protest demonstration outside the conference venue, complaining that the meeting was heavily lopsided in favor of those calling for an easing of EU sanctions against Burma.

This year, the organizers invited representatives of NGOs, advocacy groups, international organizations and think tanks from Burma and Europe to discuss the current Burma situation and the country’s future outlook, under the conference theme of “Burma/Myanmar—Prospects for the Future.”

Among the participants were Dan Baker, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Burma; Piero Fassino, EU special envoy for Burma; Jack Dunford, executive director of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, and Charm Tong, a leading Burmese activist from the Shan Women Action Network.