The Burmese, although quite a sizeable minority in Singapore, don’t seem to have their own quarter, at least not to the same noticeable degree. I’d like to know why, but right now, I can only speculate. I suspect it is partly because they are dispersed across job types and thus socio-economic strata.

Many Thais came into Singapore as construction workers, and Golden Mile as we know it today sprang up to serve them, not just as Thais, but as Thais of a certain occupational and socio-economic type.

The Filipino migrant workers in Singapore are mainly domestic helpers, and given that commonality of interest, they flock together on Sundays around Lucky Plaza.

Not all Thais and Filipinos identify with Golden Mile or Lucky Plaza. Many from the middle and professional classes (with their families here) do not. They go shopping in places where Singaporeans shop, and spend their weekends where Singaporeans do (on the golf links, at the beach, eating out).

I don’t think there is a defining occupation for the Burmese in Singapore. Some come by as seamen, others are traders, but increasingly we see scions of the middle class coming over as college and university students, who then stay on as professionals. Educational and career opportunities in military-junta-controlled Burma are pitiable, and talent is steadily flowing out of the country.

In their own country, the various subgroups of Burmese would have little in common with each other; so it would not be natural to congregate strongly even when outside their country. That’s why, according to my theory, we don’t see a Burmese ghetto.

* * * * *

Thus it came as a bit of surprise one day to chance upon a considerable cluster of Burmese shops in Peninsula Plaza, almost taking over the entire 3rd floor, with many more shops on the 4th. Except for a food shop with 5 or 6 guys in it watching a video over tea or coffee, they were all deserted. Most of the other shops sold small things like traditional woven cloth, slippers and snacks from home, plus a few dealing in second-hand computers or video rentals.

They weren’t much different from the shops seen in Golden Mile (Little Bangkok) catering to the migrant Thai community (except for the missing crowds). On the one hand, such a parallel was easy to comprehend, yet there was a big difference. The rent at Peninsula Plaza must be much higher than at Golden Mile. Without even the same traffic, let alone more, how could these Burmese shop-owners afford the rent at such a downtown location?

For a small shop of 30 or 40 square metres, the monthly rent could well be S$3,000. How many jars of home-made spices, how many pairs of traditional felt and leather slippers would one need to sell to recover that overhead?

Intrigued, I asked another tenant in the same building, a Singaporean, what she thought of that mystery.

"For a long while, it was a mystery to me too," she said. "But I eventually found out that their main business is not retail."

"They’re primarily trading businesses, doing a lot of barter trade between Singapore and Burma. Maybe even money-laundering."

* * * * *

Memories flooded back. In the mid 1990s, I had on a number of occasions, first-hand dealings with members of the Yangon government. They left me with the strong impression of being all talk, no action, and completely self-serving in their motivation for anything. Around them were shady circles of businessmen benefiting from official connections, which were critically important since licences were needed for everything. It was illegal even to have a fax machine or internet connection without a licence, let alone to import or export goods. Remittance of money outwards at a realistic exchange rate was well-nigh impossible.

I have seen at first-hand yards full of teak logs stripped from virgin forests, and boulders of jade mined under the most medieval conditions – in fact I often wondered whether the ragged ‘miners’ weren’t political prisoners put to hard labour. I was told that these commodities were being exported by various consortia of trading houses, with profits eventually flowing to the senior-most members of the junta.

I came across an instance when in exchange for a permit to do something quite routine, came a request to donate a suggested and not insubstantial sum to the military officers’ benevolent association. How many businesses in similar situations found the courage in their loins to reject this invitation to perform an act of charity is not difficult to guess.

And like many, I have noted many news stories about drug dealers in cahoots with the same government leaders.

It is not my intention to suggest that these traders in Peninsula Plaza are in the same government-linked league. I'm not privy to their business models, though knowing today’s Burma, it’s hard to imagine any businessman able to do external trade, barter or otherwise, without being enmeshed with officialdom one way or another.

And where are the profits parked? Certainly not in Burma, denominated in worthless kyats. The parking of ill-gotten gains is a supremely murky business which even skilled financial trackers find it hard to get a grip on, but it’s an open secret that Singapore is one of the destinations. Come on, what are financial capitals for, after all?

Then there’s medical services. Remember when the junta strongman Ne Win was terminally ill? He was checking in and out of Singapore hospitals, and the grapevine has it that other Yangon leaders do likewise. The secret bank accounts would come in just handy, wouldn’t they?

Of course, looking across history and geography, there is nothing unusual about Singapore playing such a role. Small countries perched near bigger closed states make money from being a release valve. Beirut and Bahrain offer financial and entertainment options to many officials and wealthy citizens of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. British Hong Kong profited from being next door to Maoist China. Singapore’s economy owed much to the funds and businesses spilling over from Suharto’s Indonesia, during a period when the standard corruption take was 30% of any government-linked contract (that figure was quite openly given to me once by an oil-industry executive, as if there was nothing left to hide)

Yet, it does not always end up roses. After Suharto was overthrown (May 1998), it was very tempting for the new leaders to focus their ire on Singapore whenever they needed a scapegoat for their inability to turn the economy around. Those Chinese Singaporeans, they were likely to say, collaborated with the Suharto cronies and sucked us dry, and that’s why we have no money for rapid development or bigger subsidies even after the dictator’s gone.

Fortunately, the "revolution" in Indonesia wasn’t that far-reaching. The post-Suharto governments have mostly been drawn from the same elite, and so they realise that they can’t go too far in Singapore-bashing without their own closet skeletons being exposed. In addition, private business and trading relationships between Indonesian and Singaporean corporate titans held steady and gave ballast to the economic ties even as political upheaval occurred.

But with Burma, the revolution, when or if it happens, could be much more traumatic. If the entire military junta was swept out and replaced by a new leadership that had no prior connections with the old order, then our present cosy dealings with officials and cronies of the junta would be a huge liability. Singapore may be badly tainted by association.

Tough, you may say, but what choice do we have when we can’t control events in Burma? One simply has to make hay while the sun shines. We’ll just have to ride out the rough patch in our relationship with the new Burmese government should it happen.

As a matter of fact, there is something we can do to buffer the risk. Read on.

* * * * *

It was utter folly to have admitted Burma into ASEAN. None of the existing members of ASEAN gained anything from their presence. It only disgraced us by making us look complicit in their brutality. It complicated our relationships with the US and the EU, countries that were, rightly, displeased with the way the Yangon junta treated their own citizens, especially Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1988 elections only to be denied the right to form a government. She has been under house arrest for years now. Such behaviour on the part of the military government is simply unacceptable to any civilised country.

Under ASEAN’s rotational system for chairing the group, Burma would be taking the head position by late 2006. This would be a disgrace to us all, even without the threat of a boycott of all dialogue and co-operation by the EU.

Thank goodness for some Malaysian parliamentarians who had the gumption to raise this issue and press for the exclusion of Burma from the chairmanship. Left alone, most Southeast Asian governments are too soft on anti-democratic abuse of power, mostly because they themselves aren’t exactly innocent of such tendencies.

My question is: where are the Singapore parliamentarians on this? Where are our civil society voices?

You laugh. And you have every reason to, for we have no voice. Our government has nothing but antipathy to lobby groups; they don’t like to have their freedom of manoeuvre circumscribed by independent forces, not even on non-domestic issues such as Burma's human rights record. The reason is simple: it's too easy once the spotlight is turned on Burma, to swing the lamp onto Singapore. So, non-government voices are not welcome (pro-forma exhortations by cabinet ministers for active citizenry notwithstanding). And just in case our civil society players don’t play by the rules of the game, our media can be relied upon not to give too much publicity to any unauthorised agenda.

Even our ruling party parliamentarians understand that they shouldn't speak out of turn. So while Malaysian parliamentarians had the balls to push their government to take a firmer line on Burma, Singapore's PAP MPs remain strangely silent.

This makes for an orderly, peaceful Singapore, apologists for our government will say. Leave diplomacy to the quiet workings of government-to-government contacts, away from the public glare.

Yes, there is a time for quiet diplomacy, but there is also a time to abandon it. Nearly two decades after Aung San Suu Kyi was blocked from taking power after her election victory, we are fools to think that the military junta cares two hoots about quiet diplomacy. A generation of Burmese have been impoverished and what new ideas do we have?

And more: the failure of Singaporeans to speak up, whether due to lack of interest or to a culture of leaving such matters to the government, is not in Singapore’s own interest.

The political situation in Burma is untenable. Sooner or later, the regime will either have to reform itself, or it will collapse. Should the case be the latter, replaced by new leaders who have been badly treated by the present regime, Singapore’s behaviour will come under the spotlight. Why have we looked the other way for so long? Why have we been so keen to welcome the dictators and their money? 

Realpolitick may mean that at the present moment, our government cannot realistically do much more than what they are doing vis-à-vis the relationship with the Burmese regime, but it would buffer our future difficulties with the new regime if at the non-governmental level, Singaporeans speak up today. Show the Burmese people that even if our government cannot do much at this moment, we as a people care. Demonstrate to the world that it sickens us to see the way the military treats ordinary Burmese and wrecks a country.

This issue is one example of how the tendency of the Singapore government to over-control everything here hurts Singapore’s interests. Since in our political model, everybody else must shut up and only the government can act vis-à-vis Burma, then Singapore has merely a one-dimensional relationship with that neighbour. Our future relations with a new regime are held hostage to today’s one-dimensional, softly-softly, 'I don't criticise you, you don't criticise me' relationship.

But if we have non-governmental voices speaking up in protest, actively working to limit the injustices, perhaps opening our doors to political refugees, Singapore builds social capital with the Burmese people generally. We will have a broader relationship with them and a better foundation for the longer-term future.

On top of that, I’m sure it will do the Singapore soul a world of good. Singaporeans need to find a voice, a mission that we can be proud of and call our own. It is -- and surely we must know that by now -- ultimately meaningless to be merely economic animals. It is delusory to think our value in this world is measured by efficiency, cleanliness and the absence of industrial stoppage.

At a personal level, our value is not measured by our wealth or our intellect. Our value is measured by the quality of our relationships with those around us, by how much we have helped and inspired others. So too with societies collectively.

Yes, it will be messy if parliamentarians, NGOs and private citizens speak up about Burma in a cacophony of voices, and in ways that may undercut the preferred diplomacy of our government. But it is healthy. For Burma and for us.

© Yawning Bread