Although Burma and Norway are far apart in terms of distance, geography and culture, many Burmese people feel that there is a special connection between the two countries.

When Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, Burma’s beleaguered democrats celebrated it as a moral victory over the regime’s refusal to recognize the landslide victory won by her National League for Democracy in the 1990 general election, and last week, Suu Kyi told the Wall Street Journal that if she was able to travel abroad, her first stop would be Oslo.

Since the 1990s, Norway has established itself as a firm friend of the oppressed people of Burma and has given generously to the cause of Burmese democracy and human rights. For example, the Norwegian government provided support to establish the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma in 1992, and has continued to support civil society groups in exile and inside Burma since that time.

Every person who has taken a leadership role in the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma—including Suu Kyi, ethnic leaders and prominent human rights activists—is aware of the helping hand Oslo has provided, both in terms of resources and foreign policy direction among the international community.

They are also aware, however, that Norway’s policy with respect to Burma has shifted over the last couple of years and has become somewhat murky as a result.

In January 2009, Norway’s minister of international development, Erik Solheim, visited Burma and afterward called for a review of Norway’s Burma policy with more emphasis given to economic engagement and less to isolation.

“Experience has shown that democratic development is closely linked to the emergence of a middle class. It is the middle class that has the resources to become politically engaged in promoting freedom of expression and other social progress, not the poor, whose hands are full trying to keep their children from going hungry. If a country is isolated from the rest of the world, no middle class will emerge, and achieving democratic development will be far more difficult,” he said.

His remarks received mixed feedback at the time, as Burma was still under the iron fist of a repressive military regime which the year earlier had both ignored the plight of its own people after the devastating Cyclone Nargis and passed a military-drafted Constitution in a sham referendum. In addition, the junta was on the cusp of extending Suu Kyi’s term of house arrest for spurious reasons and had yet to set a date for a general election.

Just recently, Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Barth Eide, visited Burma and also delivered remarks that drew critical attention. He told the Financial Times that he “almost left the country thinking they’re moving a little too fast.”

Moving a little too fast? It is safe to say that the vast majority of the Burmese people would not agree with Eide. Certainly the political prisoners languishing in jail do not feel that prisoners are being released “too fast,” the ethnic groups do not feel that peace negotiations are moving “too fast,” those suffering from forced labor and rape at the hands of government troops do not feel these abuses are ending “too fast,” the country’s farmers who have had their land confiscated and given to government cronies do not feel that land reform is moving “too fast,” and the list goes on and on.

While we understand the points that both Norwegian diplomats were trying to make, they have to understand that the degree of tone-deafness their remarks demonstrated regarding the plight of the Burmese people left some wondering whether Norway had conveniently forgotten the oppressive and manipulative history of the men still in charge of Burma, and whether the Scandinavian nation was now pursuing interests that did not necessarily coincide with those of the general Burmese population.

This is exactly the result that the Burmese leaders dream of when they court international diplomats with their divide and conquer strategy.

In this respect, what seems to be happening is that many of the stakeholders and observers trying to speculate about the motivations behind, and impact of, the Burmese government’s recent steps towards reform are falling into two camps: the “rose-colored glasses” camp and the “glass is half-empty” camp.

What is desperately needed, however, is for everyone to take a sober and objective look at what has actually been achieved, in a concrete and irreversible sense, and what remains to be accomplished. For example, it does not do the Burmese opposition any good to dismiss out of hand the improvements that have taken place in Burma, and it does not help the optimists in the international community to prematurely reward the Burmese leaders for actions that are preliminary and possibly ephemeral.

This is not a situation of mutual exclusivity. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, engagement versus sanctions is a “false choice,” the two go hand-in-hand, and it is possible to analyze the events taking place in Burma today both in the context of decades of false promises by Burmese regimes and in recognition that the current political environment may in some respects—but not all—be different from the past.

The reality is that engagement has been recently effective to a certain extent, but has been effectively manipulated by the Burmese leaders in the past to prolong and extend their grip on power.

And while in the long run sanctions are clearly not in the best interests of the Burmese people, the new government leaders’ desperate attempts to get them lifted (now that many businesses have been privatized into the hands of their cronies), as well as to avoid a UN Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity in Burma, shows that these tools have played a part in motivating the generals and ex-generals to change.

The Burmese opposition must acknowledge that reform will not occur overnight and welcome each step towards a more democratic and humane government. But at the same time, the international community must demand more concrete and meaningful changes before lifting its pressure on the Burmese government.

Thus far the government has made the easy, mostly risk-free and reversible choices that were in its own best interests. When it begins to make the more difficult choices that demonstrate a realization that Burma belongs to its people, and not to a handful of self-appointed men in power, then it will be time to say that meaningful reform is underway and reward the new Burmese government for its achievements.

This is the message that we hope Norwegian international development minister Solheim will deliver when he makes another visit to Burma this week, and in preparation for his trip, we would suggest he keep in mind the words spoken by his own prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, after self-described Christian fundamentalist Anders Behring Breivik went on a killing spree and murdered innocent children just outside of Oslo.

“You will not destroy our democracy, or our commitment to a better world… no one shall scare us out of being Norway,” Stoltenberg said, and pledged that his country would respond to the massacre with even more democracy.

The Norwegian prime minister’s vow to respond to attempts at oppression with calls for more democracy should not be limited to his own country. If his response had been a call for a broadening of the middle class in order to produce a larger number of enlightened citizens and thereby reduce the chance of further killings, or said that Norway shouldn’t institute legal reforms “too fast” for fear of provoking similar incidents, the citizens of Norway would have been understandably outraged.

So Solheim must now clear away the cloud of doubt created by his past statements and those of Deputy Foreign Minister Eide and reassert what the Burmese people have long believed—that Norway stands firmly behind them and will demand that the Burmese leadership demonstrate an irreversible commitment to attaining, without delay and as soon as possible, democracy and human rights for all the people of Burma.

Related articles: The Myth of the Democratizing Middle Class 
                                 Norway's Horror is Our Own
                                 Norwegian Naïveté in Burma?