On January 12, on a vote of 9-3 with three abstentions, the UN Security Council rejected a non-punitive resolution seeking to press the Government of Burma to speed up democratic reforms in that Southeast Asian nation. Despite having the requisite nine votes required for the resolution to be adopted, it failed because of a double-veto by permanent Council members China and Russia. Joining these two dissenters was the curious vote of South Africa. After the vote, Council members took turns making public statements explaining their positions.
The impeccably-dressed Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations leaned forward and spoke forcefully into his microphone as he addressed the Security Council. Most fundamentally, he said, the inclusion of "this item" on the Security Council's agenda does not fit within the mandate of the UN Charter, which requires the Council only to consider issues that constitute a threat to international peace and security and bans the organization from considering matters within the domestic jurisdiction of a country.
So were these the comments of South Africa's UN Permanent Representative Dumisani S. Kumalo last week? Actually, no. The above description summarizes the statement of South Africa's then UN Ambassador Brand Fourie during the first-ever discussion about South Africa held in the UN Security Council on April 1, 1960. Despite Mr. Fourie's strong remarks, at that very same meeting the Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the South African government's apartheid policies and urging further action. With the passage of time, South Africa has apparently forgotten that this historic first discussion about apartheid in the Security Council only happened after a group of 30 nations, including the then-democratic Government of Burma, wrote a letter to the Council in March 1960 requesting it urgently address the situation there because of the large-scale killings of unarmed and peaceful demonstrators against apartheid.
As a teenager growing up outside of Washington, D.C., I attended a number of rallies protesting apartheid in front of the South African Embassy in the mid-1980s. And I was excited at the opportunity to live and work in South Africa after finishing university in the mid-1990s. Through these experiences, I developed a strong affinity for South Africa and grew to love the country and its people. As a result, I am profoundly saddened that a now democratic South African government could so callously provide support for one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world today.
So why is South Africa willing to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the Burmese people? First, Ambassador Kumalo claimed the country is simply "not a threat to international peace and security." A report issued by former Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Czech Republic President Václav Havel explains the threat in painstaking detail.
Since 1996, it is estimated that over 2,900 villages have been destroyed by the military junta in Burma creating over one million refugees who have fled to neighboring countries. There are 600,000 internally-displaced persons in the country who live in appalling jungle conditions. The military junta is estimated to have over 800,000 people in forced labour in the country, systematically uses rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minority women, and forcibly employs over 70,000 child soldiers. Burma is also the number two exporter of heroin and opiates in the world and a major producer of methamphetamines. And the country's failure to address its HIV/AIDS crisis has led to new strains of the disease being spread along drug routes into China and Thailand. The cross-border effect of the situation in Burma is significant and more severe then in many other circumstances where the Security Council has intervened for the first time, most notably, back in South Africa in 1960.
Second, Ambassador Kumalo argued the situation in Burma is best left to the new Human Rights Council and other UN organs. Surprisingly, he appears unaware of the history of the UN's attempts to help the Burmese people. Over the past 15 years, both the General Assembly and former Commission on Human Rights adopted a total of 29 resolutions unsuccessfully urging change in Burma. It is precisely because of the severity of the situation and the abject failure of prior UN action that the situation needs to be addressed by the Security Council.
Lastly, Ambassador Kumalo argued that having the Security Council adopt a resolution on Burma would compromise the efforts of the "good offices" of UN Under-Secretary Ibrahim Gambari to achieve national reconciliation in the country. While this argument might be reasonable if made by another country, it isn't from South Africa. In recent years, South Africa has voted to kill or has abstained from resolutions in the General Assembly that established and encouraged the UN's involvement in the national reconciliation process in Burma. To now suggest that a Security Council resolution would interfere with a process South Africa has long opposed is disingenuous at best.
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The world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has said to the international community "please use your liberty to promote ours." I hope the people of South Africa tell its government that it should stand in solidarity with the suffering people of Burma and not with the generals oppressing them.
Jared Genser is a lawyer in Washington, D.C. and a Visiting Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. This article represents his personal views.
This piece was originally published in The Star (Johannesburg) on January 17, 2007.
