Burmese envoy to change the message

By Avinash Gavai, Embassy Magazine (Canada’s Foreign Policy

Newsweekly)
Ottawa, Wednesday, May 4, 2011

(Subscription required for online view at

http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/dipcirc-05-04-2011)

New Burmese Ambassador Kyaw Tin is used to straddling the fine lines between
policy, protocol, and problems.

For three years he served as the director general of the political department in his
country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with additional responsibilities as Burma’s lead
officer in ASEAN and East Asia forums.

Representing a nation considered a pariah by many, including Canada, Mr. Kyaw

Tin’s task was never going to be easy—and now that he’s in Ottawa, he’s ready for
a little time to breath.

“I actually will have time for reflection now,” Mr. Kyaw Tin says. “My previous
posting as political DG was extremely hectic and tough— a huge professional
challenge. But there is a significant challenge [in Canada] as well.”

The envoy finds himself in the unique position of having just witnessed the first
stirrings of at least a semblance of democratic process in his native land, while
coming into a country that has just elected its first majority government in seven
years.

A general election was held in Burma (known officially as Myanmar) late last year, in
accordance with the new constitution. The UN and most Western countries—
including Canada—condemned the elections as fraudulent.

For Mr. Kyaw Tin, however, such judgments do not take into account the complexity
of Burma’s political and social framework.

Since 1962, the military has largely dominated Burmese politics, when it toppled
the then-civilian government in a coup. Even though there is ostensibly a civilian
government now, 25 per cent of seats in parliament are still reserved for the
military.

“You Canadians have a well developed democracy, you cannot compare it to

Myanmar, ours has to be gradually,” Mr. Kyaw Tin says. “But nobody can deny that
there are incremental changes taking place in our country. I think these changes
are in the right direction…. It would be wrong to conclude that nothing has changed
in our country.”

The Harper government has made it explicitly clear that its policy towards Burma is
a direct reflection of the severe problems the military government has created for
its people, and the security concerns that the policies of its leadership and the
actions of its armed forces pose to the international community.

The result has been the adoption in 2007 of some of the toughest sanctions in the
world against Burma, in an effort to exert pressure against the military junta.

For all this cloud of tension and mutual distrust, there appears to be a ray of hope
when it comes to bilateral relations—the appointment of Mr. Kyaw Tin as
ambassador. He happens to be the first Burmese ambassador to be appointed to
Canada in six years, since the previous ambassador was recalled to Burma in 2004
following the purging of Burma’s intelligence services.

“I think it’s because I am a career diplomat, not a political appointee,” says Mr.
Kyaw Tin when asked why his diplomatic credentials were accepted by Canada’s
government.

The appointment of a fully-fledged head of mission has already reaped some

benefits. On Mar. 24, a Canadian Ron Zakreski was detained while taking photos
of the scene of an earlier battle between Myanmar government troops and Karen
ethnic minority rebels. A request made to the ambassador subsequently lead to Mr.
Zakreski’s deportation back home, instead of a lengthy prison term.

While most other diplomats consider trade or aid as their primary goals, the
Burmese envoy’s prime consideration involves countering what he considers
“misinformation about Myanmar,” and also “the lack of knowledge Canadians have
about it,” which he believes stems from a biased
media, and the efforts of opposition groups such as the Canadian Friends of Burma
(CFOB) who “report on only the bad things.”

With 32 years of diplomatic service, Mr. Kyaw Tin didn’t envision a diplomatic career
as a long-term goal. But jobs were hard to come by in 1978 so, after completing his
degree in Maths from Yangon University, he jumped at the chance of attaining some
financial freedom by accepting a clerical position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

His chosen profession has taken him to Australia, Thailand, the UN in New York
twice, and also Geneva. A lesser-known fact is that he was also posted as a chargé
d’affaires of Burma’s embassy in Ottawa back in 2005—under rather urgent
circumstances.

“I was posted to New York last time from 2003, at the time our ambassador in
Ottawa was recalled, so I was asked to temporarily take charge of the mission for
seven months,” he says.

The winner of his country’s “Outstanding Public Service Medal Award,” in 2003, Mr.
Kyaw Tin hopes to take the chance to really get a taste of Ottawa life and visit other
Canadian provinces with his wife Lwin Lwin Hman.