Mother Jones: The Politics of the Belly: Who's Enabling Burma's Junta?

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The last time Burma saw such widespread protests was in 1988, when pro-democracy student activists took to the street. The government answered in full force, massacring 3,000 and arresting many more. But this year’s protests differ in some important ways from those of two decades ago: For starters, they began not with demands for democracy or civil liberties, but as an outcry against the price of basic goods such as rice and peanut oil, which had risen sharply overnight.

"It is the politics of the belly writ large," says David Scott Mathieson, a Burma expert with Human Rights Watch. Burma used to be the rice bowl of Asia and, endowed with timber, mines, natural gas and a coastline rich with marine life, should be one of the continent’s wealthier countries. Yet today more than half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, and in some places mortality and malnutrition rates are worse than those of sub-Saharan Africa.

The other key feature of the new protests, of course, was that Buddhist monks took the lead. "The two most disciplined groups in the country are the military and the monks," notes Moe Oo, 36, a magazine editor in Rangoon.

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In addition to the prominence of the clergy and the international attention, perhaps the most critical difference between now and ’88 is the role of China—Burma’s largest trading partner and, according to human-rights advocates, the military regime’s best friends. "China has provided the weapons and money to make this massacre happen while using its veto to paralyze any response from the UN Security Council," says Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the US Campaign for Burma, which has advocated for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics next year.

Yet in the face of international demands to put pressure on the Burmese regime, China has insisted that its policy is non-interference. "China has remained silent on human rights in Burma," says Matthew Smith with EarthRights International, an NGO with offices in Thailand and the United States. "Applying pressure on Burma would raise questions about its own record that China is not prepared to answer. And the country has an increasing demand for natural resources such as natural gas and timber, which the junta generously provides as long as China does not disrupt the brutal status quo."

According to retired Indian army Maj. Gen Dipankar Banerjee, director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, if human rights groups get traction with the argument that China "continues to support a dictatorial regime in its neighborhood and they can connect that to the 2008 Olympics, that will scare the shit out of Beijing."

But China is not the only country doing business with Burma, only the largest. In recent years India has made an about-face, shifting dramatically from a policy of supporting opposition party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy movement and criticizing the military government, to courting the junta, cooperating on cross-border anti-insurgency campaigns, and bidding for Burma’s natural resources.

"India will go along only until it sees some possibility of change," says Maj. Gen. Banerjee, and for the moment that’s not happening. On Sunday and Monday India’s Petroleum minister Murli Deora paid a visit to high ranking Burmese generals to witness the signing of a production sharing agreements between India’s state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise.

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