Bangkok: As Myanmar’s reclusive ruling military junta moves toward more isolationism, its senior generals are moving to re-establish something akin to the country’s long-abolished monarchy to shore up their lagging legitimacy. As the new palace walls go up, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has stepped up its persecution of foreign organizations operating in the country.

November’s mass relocation of Myanmar’s capital 400 kilometers north to Pyinmana from Yangon was shrouded in secrecy and caught many observers, diplomats and regional allies unawares. Civil servants were given a day’s notice of the move, and thousands of government workers were abruptly bused with their belongings to the newly built, mosquito-infested capital city.

At the time, many viewed the move as a strategic retreat motivated by fears of a possible US invasion. Washington officials had repeatedly referred to the regime as an “outpost of tyranny” because of its abysmal human-rights record. A siege mentality definitely motivated the move, but as the dust settles on Pyinmana, it is apparent that the move is part of a larger scheme to establish a new sort of royal order for the country.

Resurrecting royalty

Than Shwe, the SPDC’s top general, is systematically resurrecting the symbols and rituals of Myanmar’s royal history to lend legitimacy to his regime’s right to rule. And there are emerging indications that he intends to anoint himself as the country’s new monarch – more than 120 years after British India annexed and dissolved the Awa royal dynasty.

In neighboring Thailand, a widely revered constitutional monarch has underpinned the country’s transition to democracy – a constitutional model the generals have no doubt noted. This year’s relatively subdued Army Day celebrations were held in Pyinmana, which was christened the “Royal City” on March 27, the same date the country’s liberation army was founded in 1945.

Three golden statues of former Burmese kings watched over the parade grounds at the new palace-city, nestled in the same hills where Myanmar’s independence leader General Aung San – the father of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi – launched his movement against the Japanese occupation 61 years ago.

“Today, the tatmadaw [armed forces] and the people are striving together for the emergence of a democratic state and these are tasks which need time to be implemented,” Than Shwe, 74, told members of the armed forces last week on Army Day.

At the same time, it is also clear that the SPDC has no intentions of introducing political reform and handing over power to a civilian government – as it previously asserted to appease the international community. Instead, the junta is adopting an increasingly isolationist strategy to preserve its power and deflect international pressure to reform its politics. It recently arrested and sentenced to prison three local journalists who had photographed Pyinmana without official permission.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Seri Syed Hamid Albar cut short a visit to Myanmar last month, a trip that had already been delayed months by the junta. Representing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), he was not able to meet with Than Shwe or Suu Kyi or to see Pyinmana. His highest-level meeting was with his Foreign Ministry counterpart.

Apart from the royal symbolism, the move to Pyinmana had an important strategic component, political analysts contend. By moving to a more central geographic location, the regime will have better access to the frontier areas, along the borders with India, China and Thailand, and be able to exert greater control over the ethnic rebel groups that have recently signed tenuous ceasefire pacts and the other armed groups that are still fighting for autonomy.

“The motive behind the move is to make sure the military is in a better strategic position to control the regional commanders, the ethnic rebel groups in the border areas [and] the future parliament and combat any possible social unrest throughout the country,” said Win Min, a Myanmar analyst in exile.

The move also was apparently designed to head off resistance from within. “Stuck in Pyinmana, the civil servants are less likely to be contaminated by the [critical] public sentiment on the streets of Rangoon [Yangon],” said a Yangon-based Western diplomat. “The regime is conscious of the role government workers played in [the] 1988 [uprising] when they joined the students and monks on the streets of the capital calling for democracy.”

Aware of the resentment the sudden move may have galvanized among civil servants and some soldiers, the government recently announced a tenfold increase in government salaries to commence after the Buddhist New Year in mid-April. But the inflationary pressure from the mass move is also likely to accentuate the country’s smoldering financial crisis, which has deepened through the billions of dollars spent building the new capital.

In 2003, the government moved to shutter several scandal-ridden banks, leaving thousands of depositors empty-handed. With the exchange rate fixed well below black-market rates and the politically expedient decision to bolster government salaries at a time state coffers are depleted, Myanmar’s malfunctioning economy is starting to show some of the glaring financial distortions seen in Argentina before that country’s fateful economic and social meltdown in 2002.

Expelling the white faces

The move to Pyinmana and the resurrection of royal symbolism, however, is only part of Than Shwe’s strategy to preserve political power. The October 2004 purge of the once-powerful Military Intelligence Service (MIS) saw the unceremonious fall of former prime minister and intelligence chief General Khin Nyunt and thousands of his MIS supporters. Khin Nyunt was widely viewed as the military officer who most favored engagement with the international community, and he was instrumental in Myanmar’s accession into ASEAN in 1997.

Late last year, Than Shwe told the other top military leaders that all the “white faces” should be expelled from the country. He reportedly ordered that they be replaced either by Myanmar people, or at the very least by other Asian faces. Since then, the SPDC’s persecution of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies has been stepped up dramatically.

“We do not need anyone’s help, not the UN, not India or China, nor ASEAN,” he told the United Nations secretary general’s special envoy, Ali Alatas, when they met in Yangon in August.

In that direction, authorities recently introduced strict new guidelines to control the activities of the international agencies operating in Myanmar, including the UN. In February, the junta refused to renew the visa of the country representative for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Geneva-based conflict-resolution outfit that played a behind-the-scenes role in establishing the secret and eventually failed UN-brokered negotiations between the SPDC and the opposition National League for Democracy in 2003.

A special ministerial committee has recently been established to oversee the implementation of these regulations and control the activities headed by the planning minister, with the interior minister and foreign minister acting as his deputies.

“This is clearly part of the military government’s overall security strategy to make sure that it is in total control of the countryside,” said a UN worker formerly based in Myanmar, requesting anonymity. After the 2004 purge, “army chief Maung Aye was horrified when he realized that the military headquarters was totally unaware of how many foreigners and international organizations were operating in the country”, he said.

The military’s top brass have moved to control international NGO activities tightly and restrict the UN’s operations. “There has been a concerted effort to make sure we cannot visit our projects throughout the country over the past year,” said one international aid worker based in Yangon. There is also a campaign under way to expel the few critical international organizations left in the country.

Last year the International Organization of Labor (ILO), which has in the past reported on the junta’s use of forced labor, was inundated with death threats, according to its officials. This practice ended abruptly after it was revealed in the international media. No group was ever arrested or took responsibility for making the menacing calls.

Thereafter, however, Than Shwe and his top advisers have aggressively lobbied the UN to take the pro-government grassroots organization the Union Solidarity Development Association (USDA) as its main local partner – a suggestion UN representatives in Yangon have strenuously rejected since it was first mooted more than six months ago. Negotiations are ongoing and the UN has encountered increasing difficulties in conducting its work here.

Some months ago the authorities told the International Crescent Red Cross (ICRC) that officials from the USDA and local community organizations, such as the National Women’s Committee, must accompany them on their prison visits. The ICRC rejected this out of hand – as it is international practice for the independent humanitarian organization to visit prisoners privately and not reveal information publicly about the visits.

Since February, the ICRC has stopped all prison visits and the future of the respected non-partisan organization’s work in Myanmar is in severe jeopardy. Already there are reports the situation for political prisoners in the country’s jails has deteriorated dramatically since the ICRC suspended its visits. “Beatings of prisoners in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison have increased since the Red Cross stopped visiting,” said a former political prisoner with contacts in the prison.

Both the ILO and ICRC notably work in sensitive areas for the military, especially the strategic border areas, and Maung Aye reportedly sees them as a threat to the army’s authority. Both organizations are likely to face increasing problems and pressure from the ruling junta in the coming months to withdraw from the country all together, Yangon-based diplomats say.

There is little to no evidence that Myanmar’s top generals, increasingly desperate – both economically and politically – have reconsidered their attitude toward the former military intelligence officers who once engaged with the international community but in 2004 were cashiered out of the army and sentenced to long jail terms for various charges and offenses.

“Unfortunately Burma’s leaders are not like their Chinese patrons when it comes to those who lose their position for political reasons,” said a former diplomat requesting anonymity. “There is very little chance of Khin Nyunt and his people rising from the ashes, as Deng Xiaoping did after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and taking a significant role in the administration of the country.”

Instead, the junta seems increasingly content to pull up the drawbridge on their new palatial capital and withdraw from the wider world around them.

Larry Jagan previously covered Myanmar politics for the BBC. He is currently a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.