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BURMESE RESPONSE TO FUEL PROTESTS

Over the last few months, the nation of Burma has gone through a grater than normal period of social and civil unrest. Burma is host to the longest running civil war in modern times. However, the amount of civil disobedience that has been experienced in the Capital of Rangoon has been well out of the ordinary. The cause of this civil unrest was the Stat Peace and Development Council's decision on August 15 to increase fuel prices throughout the Country. According to a Human Rights Watch report entitled, Burma: Arbitrary Detention of Protestors, the SPDC raised the price of fuel by as much as 500 percent in some places. The average income of a Burmese citizen is already relatively low. In addition, the Kyat, which is the state currency, is greatly inflated. This fuel price increase makes the already difficult life of the Burmese people much more complicated.

Burma is an important source of natural gas. There is no shortage of fuel. The problem is that the government control's fuel production and supply. The government is also lacking in funds to continue its attempts at putting down the insurgencies in the countryside. It appears that the Government believed that a price increase would increase its revenue. It would appear that the ruling officials fatally lack understanding of basic economic principles. Perhaps though the Burmese economy is already too degraded for another policy mistake on the part of the government to make any difference. Only time will tell.
However, as stated earlier, there has been a social and civil backlash against the fuel price increase. On August 19th and 22nd, there were several large protest held throughout Rangoon. According to the Human Rights Watch report mentioned earlier, the protestors numbered in the hundreds. These are certainly not great numbers compares to protests here in the US, however, considering the consequences for assembly against the ruling SPDC party, the tern out for these protests was relatively good. The same report goes on to say that unidentified SPDC supporters assaulted the protestors at one of the gatherings. Later, government security forces arrested a number of pro-democracy activists and opposition members.

This is by no means new behavior for the SPDC, however it is enough to have the Kingdom of Thailand concerned with the situation. In the words of the Bangkok Post, "Thailand is closely monitoring the political situation in Burma." According to

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