Joshua Kurlantzick

Over the past two weeks, a series of bombs have hit major cities in Burma, including Rangoon, Mandalay and Naypyidaw, the purpose-built city in the centre of the country where the regime moved its capital six years ago. Even by Burma’s standards, Naypyidaw is a heavily policed city. A bombing there requires significant planning and, probably, some co-ordination with sympathetic police and soldiers. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings, which wounded at least two people (any numbers coming out of Burma are notoriously unreliable), but they are the latest sign of a rapidly deteriorating political situation in parts of the country.

For some time now, China has been growing increasingly aggressive toward its neighbours. This newly confident foreign policy, a shift from a decade of charming other nations in Asia, has been most evident in Beijing’s demands that other nations recognise its sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. In recent weeks, Beijing has insisted that Vietnam stop exploring for oil in the waters and delivered a blunt warning to any outside powers – i.e. the United States – not to intervene in any disputes over the Sea. Chinese vessels have cut the cables on Vietnamese ships, and China has stepped up its seizures of Vietnamese and Philippine boats, in a major breach of maritime protocol.

Over the past two years, royalists in Thailand have filed hundreds of charges of lèse majesté against their political opponents. As many as 100,00 websites have been banned for insulting the king and the royal family. The country, once hailed as a beacon of democracy for the region, is now ranked 153 out of 178 in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, just above Belarus.

In all the excitement at Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, too little attention has been paid to the question of why the junta let her out of house arrest. Regime officials say that she had come to the end of her term and so, by law, they could not hold her any more. But that explanation won’t do: in Burma, the ‘law’ is whatever the junta says it is, and the regime has on numerous occasions over the past twenty years come up with new trumped-up charges to keep Suu Kyi locked up.