[The decision to go a step further, and scrap the
sanctions entirely, reflects Mr. Obama’s belief in using diplomacy paired with
sanctions relief to prod former foreign adversaries toward greater openness.
That principle was at the heart of Mr. Obama’s agreement last year with Iran to
relax sanctions in exchange for restraints on the country’s nuclear program,
and has been the driving force behind the opening of a dialogue with Cuba.]
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
 |
|
President Obama said that
the United States is “prepared to lift sanctions” during a
meeting with Myanmar’s
leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, at the White House.
By REUTERS on Publish
Date September 14, 2016. Photo by
Al Drago/The New York
Times. Watch in Times Video »
|
WASHINGTON
— President Obama pledged on
Wednesday to lift all remaining sanctions against Myanmar, seeking to reward
the country’s recent moves toward democracy after decades of brutal military
rule.
The White House issued the announcement
during a visit by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s leader, whose victory in
democratic elections last year was viewed by the Obama administration as a
triumph in the president’s strategy of engaging with countries the United
States had long shunned.
“In part because of the progress that we’ve
seen over the last several months,” Mr. Obama said in the Oval Office, seated
beside Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, “the United States is now prepared to lift
sanctions that we have imposed on Burma for quite some time.
“It is the right thing to do in order to
ensure that the people of Burma see rewards from a new way of doing business
and a new government,” the president said.
“Congratulations on the progress that has
been made,” he told Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest as a
political prisoner when Mr. Obama was elected president. “It is not complete,
and I think Daw Suu is the first one to indicate that a lot of work remains to
be done, but it’s on the right track.”
But the move was quickly criticized by
leaders of some human rights groups, who said they worried that eliminating
sanctions was premature given the slow pace of change in Myanmar, also known as
Burma, where the military still controls a large portion of parliamentary seats
and important government ministries.
“If the issue was growing Burma’s economy,
there are plenty of other ways to do that without pulling off all of these
important restrictions, which have given Suu Kyi much-needed leverage over the
military, with whom she still has battles ahead,” said John Sifton, the deputy
Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “If the issue is leverage, the
decision today makes almost no sense: Obama and Suu Kyi just took important
tools out of their collective tool kit for dealing with the Burmese military, and
threw them into the garbage.”
It remained unclear exactly when the
remaining sanctions would be lifted; they apply to trade in jade and precious
stones, and to doing business with some of Myanmar’s military officials or
their affiliates. Restrictions imposed by Congress, including sanctions related
to North Korea and those governing arms sales and military cooperation, will
remain unless lawmakers vote to lift them.
Mr. Obama had moved in May to ease a broad
array of sanctions that barred American citizens and companies from doing
business with Myanmar, loosening restrictions on state-owned banks and
entities.
But, at that time, he left in place an
official government finding of a state of emergency for Myanmar, which calls
the country an “extraordinary threat.” Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Obama sent
Congress official notice that he was restoring trade benefits to Myanmar that
were revoked in 1989 because of concerns over worker rights, allowing it to
qualify for a program that allows poor countries to export thousands of
products duty-free to the United States.
The decision to go a step further, and scrap
the sanctions entirely, reflects Mr. Obama’s belief in using diplomacy paired
with sanctions relief to prod former foreign adversaries toward greater openness.
That principle was at the heart of Mr. Obama’s agreement last year with Iran to
relax sanctions in exchange for restraints on the country’s nuclear program,
and has been the driving force behind the opening of a dialogue with Cuba.
Since taking power six months ago, Ms. Aung
San Suu Kyi has moved to heal ethnic conflicts that have long plagued Myanmar.
She invited a team led by Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary
general, to begin investigating the plight of the Rohingya, a group of about a
million Muslims living in dire conditions in western Myanmar.
Yet Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had declined to use
the term “Rohingya” to describe the persecuted Muslim population that has lived
in Myanmar for generations, angering rights activists who had hoped she would
reverse discriminatory policies that have marginalized the Rohingya and
prompted many to flee.
And crucial political changes have yet to be
made, like amending Myanmar’s Constitution to remove the military’s control
over 25 percent of parliamentary seats, its ability to dissolve Parliament in
times of national emergency and its control over the nation’s security, defense
and border ministries.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said she was grateful to
the United States for enacting sanctions that pressured Myanmar to restore
human rights, but added that the time had come for the restrictions to be
lifted. She also said she was eager to draw foreign visitors and investment to
her country.
Saying her first priority was “national
reconciliation and peace,” Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi also conceded that she had to
do more to shift the government toward civilian rule.
“We have a Constitution that is not very
democratic, because it gives the military a special place in politics,” she
said.
Obama administration officials have argued
that freeing Myanmar from economic sanctions need not wait until the country
liberalizes entirely, and that doing so will improve the chances that democracy
will take hold there. It is also an important legacy issue for Mr. Obama, who
said during a visit there in 2012 that it was time to open the United States’
relationship with Myanmar, despite the fact that it was not yet a “perfect
democracy.”
On Wednesday, the White House insisted that
Mr. Obama had not been swayed by a concern for his legacy to remove the
sanctions before Myanmar had demonstrated more progress on its transition to
democracy.
“The president was quite interested in making
as much progress as we can to support the Burmese people and the Burmese
government in pursuing democratic reforms, but the decision to lift the
national emergency was driven by the progress they made in Burma — not by the
election calendar in the United States,” said Josh Earnest, the White House
press secretary.
