A former UN official who opposed international pressure on
Myanmar’s military and was later paid by Norway to work with the previous military controlled government on the failing peace process has accused Aung San Suu Kyi of being
authoritarian.
In a scathing article for the Washington Post, drafted while
drinking tea made from a black kettle, Charles Petrie, who as UN head in
Myanmar lobbied for the lifting of sanctions against Than Shwe’s military
dictatorship, cited a report from a civil society organisation he once used to
dismiss as one of many ‘out of touch hard-line exiles’ based on the Thai Burma
border.
Petrie’s attempt to spin the 2007 Saffron uprising uprising
as being a protest against poverty, rather than being a political protest
against the military dictatorship, in order to further his agenda of increasing
unrestricted aid to the country, backfired when the military took offence at
the implication that they had caused poverty in the country.
Petrie was expelled from Myanmar, which he later tried to
spin as being because he bravely spoke out against the military. However, he
continued to act as an adviser to Ibrahim Gambari, the UN envoy to Myanmar who
had previously worked for the Nigerian dictatorship, in that role defending the
execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Gambari, who used to hold hands with Senior General Than
Shwe when visiting Myanmar, and was later criticized by Human Rights Watch for
hugging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes, crimes
against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Court. Petrie
advised Gambari not to mention ‘delicate’ ‘no go ’issues like violations of
international law against ethnic minorities.
After General Thein Sein, who was documented by the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar as being responsible for
war crimes in Shan State, and who oversaw the
drafting on the 2008 constitution which preserved the power of the military,
came to power as President in a rigged election in 2010, he asked the Norwegian
government for assistance for a new ‘peace process’.
Norway, whose Telenor mobile communications company was coincidentally later awarded a license by Thein Seins government to operate in Myanmar, and
whose ambassador at the time, Katja Norgaard, was coincidentally later appointed Executive
Vice President of Telenor, appointed Charles Petrie to head the controversial
Myanmar Peace Support Initiative (MPSI), set up at the request of the military controlled government.
The MPSI was accused by ethnic civil society groups of
acting in a one sided manner supporting the agenda of the military led government, and failed to produce any tangible positive outcomes. An
independent evaluation of the MPSI criticized Petrie’s leadership, concluding
it ‘it lacked operational management’, ‘failed to develop a clear
communications and outreach strategy’, ‘did not adequately share either its
purpose or its analysis’.
Petrie was excused by the evaluation for some of these
faults because at the same time he was, in violation of UN rules regarding
working for UN member state governments while being employed by the UN, also
working for the UN on a ground-breaking evaluation of the UN response to the
civil war in Sri-Lanka, in which he criticized the UN operation there for doing
almost exactly the same as he had while heading the UN in Myanmar.
Unlike his proposed approach to the military dictatorship,
to use international aid to try to ‘open doors of trust with the
military’, Petrie did not propose using international aid to work more closely
with ‘authoritarian’ Aung San Suu Kyi to build her trust and persuade her to
respect human rights. Instead he informed the world that he feels ‘sad’.
‘Independent’ analysts Ashley Horsey and Richard South were
quick to come to the defense of Petrie, citing numerous lucrative consultancy
contracts.
Burma Tha Din was unable to reach Charles Petrie for further
comment, but this could be because he mistakenly thought that we are based on
the border of Thailand.
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