My immediate reaction to the confirmation that the Australian Federal Police have been training their Burmese counterparts was nausea. Prima facie, this seems like an open-and-shut case of something we shouldn't be involved with. Training the law enforcement officials of a notoriously repressive regime? Pass.
The details of the training that have come to light - the relatively small scale, the assurance that the role of the AFP has been confined to training the Burmese in narcotics and other transnational crime - haven't done much to shift me on this. It's one thing to say Australia, and indeed the western world as a whole, is all but powerless to act in a way that would benefit the Burmese people. I don't really doubt that; the Burmese regime is famously cloistered, and external intervention on behalf of democracy has, shall we say, a spotty history at best. But it seems a disingenuous stance when the Feds are assisting the Burmese establishment, even in a small way.
The details of the training that have come to light - the relatively small scale, the assurance that the role of the AFP has been confined to training the Burmese in narcotics and other transnational crime - haven't done much to shift me on this. It's one thing to say Australia, and indeed the western world as a whole, is all but powerless to act in a way that would benefit the Burmese people. I don't really doubt that; the Burmese regime is famously cloistered, and external intervention on behalf of democracy has, shall we say, a spotty history at best. But it seems a disingenuous stance when the Feds are assisting the Burmese establishment, even in a small way.
