Democracy, or the lack of it, in Burma may wade into Barack Obama’s address to the joint session of Parliament on November 8, the day after the Burmese military junta would have conducted an election which has been dismissed as a sham by the international community. Any adverse comment about Burma by a foreign dignitary
visiting India is likely to disturb New Delhi, which has sought to deepen its ties with the junta. But the pro-democratic Burmese exiles living in India and around the world would be particularly keen to hear what Mr Obama, the winner of Nobel peace prize for 2009, will have to say about Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, who, like Mr Obama, was conferred the Nobel peace prize in 1991.
Already, the White House has indicated that the issue might figure during Mr Obama’s swing through Asia. Speaking to journalists in Washington, US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said, “... if the election does not meet the kinds of standards that we would like to see it meet [and] every indication is that it won’t, I’m sure it will be something that will come up in the course of the trip.”
Mr Rhodes referred to Mr Obama’s tour of four Asian democracies on this trip — India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan — to suggest that the Obama administration wants “to underscore the success of democracy in Asia and around the world and we’re going to speak specifically to human rights and democracy-related issues in India and at every stop essentially of this trip.”
Speaking at the same news conference as Mr Rhodes, US under secretary of state for political affairs William Burns said: “... everything we’ve seen so far casts pretty serious doubts on whether this is going to be a free and fair election. And we’ve made very clear the US position that you’re not going to have free and fair elections unless you have the some 2,100 political prisoners released in Burma, and that obviously includes Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Mr Burns said the US has “a very active dialogue with India” on a whole range of regional issues, including Burma. “... I can’t predict exactly what the conversations are going to be, but I think you’ll continue to see a strong emphasis from the President, from the United States, on human rights issues across Asia and the Pacific.”
New Delhi’s Burma policy has come in for criticism, most recently from Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, who said: “I have to say that as a loyal Indian citizen, it breaks my heart to see the Prime Minister of my democratic country — and one of the most humane and sympathetic political leaders in the world — engage in welcoming the butchers from Burma and to be photographed in a state of cordial proximity.” Mr Sen, who spent part of his childhood in Burma, was delivering the keynote address to a conference on Burma at the Johns Hopkins University in the US.