Australia’s least likely spy on tipping the balance in a brutal civil war

Australia’s least likely convicted spy walks into a Sydney cafe with a book in his hand and a smile on his face.

Sean Turnell was former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s financial Mr Fix-it, an effervescent economics professor drafted from Australia to help solve that nation’s myriad money woes. For this, he was jailed for 650 days alongside Suu Kyi and their reformist colleagues after a brutal February 2021 military coup plunged the country into chaos.

Economics professor Sean Turnell at his Sydney home.Credit: Rhett Wyman

The last time he saw her, about September 2022, they were both in jail. Suu Kyi had some ailments but was in “very good spirits”.

“She spoke about her pride in the youth, absolutely,” Turnell said, in reference to the younger generation leading the resistance to the junta. “I remember the thing that stuck out … was just that even though they’d only had this very brief experience of freedom, they were so willing to defend it. Their courage was very, very strong.”

The resistance has spent the past three and a half years trying to wrest control back from the army and has reclaimed towns and key military posts. The civil war has led to tens of thousands of deaths and millions being internally displaced.

The deposed leader did not exactly endorse picking up guns and fighting, Turnell says, “but in no sense should the resistance be passive, put it that way”.

The picture with Aung San Suu Kyi that Dr Sean Turnell posted in the aftermath of the 2021 coup.Credit: Facebook

Turnell was freed in November 2022, but his pardon has been revoked, and he has been advised against travelling to Thailand to visit colleagues and reformists who escaped the junta’s clutches. He also worries about those still imprisoned and unlikely to be freed and the severity of their conditions as the country’s turmoil worsens.

He wrote of his detention and the international campaign to free him in last year’s memoir An Unlikely Prisoner. Now he is back with another, a digestible Penguin Special/Lowy Institute volume detailing what Suu Kyi’s government was doing when the coup struck. Called Best Laid Plans and published on Tuesday, it outlines the economic reform agenda that would have driven Suu Kyi’s second term as prime minister had the coup not struck.

“The story of that civilian government, Myanmar’s first civilian government for 60 years, has been completely overshadowed by a coup and by some of the bad things that went on,” Turnell says. “I really wanted to get on the historical record that the reform program that they brought in, or tried to bring in, was incredibly bold and had a very coherent vision of an alignment between democracy, economics and freedom.”

He stresses the vision was a locally driven one, and “I was there to help”.

Protesters with pictures of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon in the aftermath of the 2021 coup.Credit: AP

“This was a homegrown story of these, you know, incredible people with courage … I wanted to get down what they were tried to do on the record because they don’t have a voice. So in some ways, mate, I had to be their voice.”

As with the man himself, the book is livelier and funnier than might be expected given the subject matter. Turnell chirps over a long black as he describes being left without smell after being diagnosed with COVID five times while in prison, grimaces at describing having to replace teeth damaged during his ordeal, and suppresses a snigger as he says his wife, Dr Ha Vu, teases him about his criminal record.

“The only good thing about it, right, is that dinner parties and things like that, it’s nice to be able to claim, well, actually, I am a convicted spy. I mean, I have a court that said I am a spy.”

Sanction the banks

Of the best-laid plans that went awry when Suu Kyi’s government was ousted in the week it was due to start a second term, Turnell was most looking forward to fixing Myanmar’s banks.

Now, he believes targeting these institutions is an essential weapon against the junta, as it relies on state-owned banks to funnel foreign exchange and purchase munitions from Russia and China. He says Australia could do better at applying sanctions to the banks, which in turn might tip the balance on the battlefield.

“By really getting at the finances, that’s the way in which the junta’s military advantage could be negated,” Turnell says. “It’s a real key vulnerability, and it does open up an opportunity for somewhere like Australia.”

Suu Kyi received international criticism for not standing up to the military over the genocide of the Rohingya, but Turnell says army leader Min Aung Hlaing’s coup was driven by a fear her government would send him to the International Criminal Court. The two had zero chemistry and talks between them broke down immediately before the coup. “The trigger was very personal,” he says.

Then-US secretary of state Hillary Clinton with Aung San Suu Kyi at the Yangon residence in 2011.Credit: AP

Being Sydney, talk inevitably turns to property: there are forces in the junta trying to sell Suu Kyi’s house in Yangon against her wishes. A second attempt failed this month after no bidders turned up. Turnell says the fact no crony was willing to put themselves forward so stridently against her “is a real giveaway of the unpopularity of that regime”.

Suu Kyi is unlikely to return home unless the regime falls, and she has been moved from prison to a military compound in the capital, Naypyidaw. The army said it was for her comfort in the face of extreme heat, but her allies suspect ulterior motives.

“Her physical circumstances might be a little bit better now, but that story is not so positive because what, equally, I think has happened is that they’ve moved her to be a human shield,” Turnell says.

“So my understanding is that both her and the president, U Win Myint, have been moved into an area where very senior military people are. Naypyidaw came under attack from drones from the opposition. And our belief is that that’s what that’s about, you know, moving her closer to them to protect themselves.”

As the junta is being defeated on the battlefield, the honorary professor of economics at Macquarie University can also see it struggling financially. Turnell says, “It’s just a question of when” the regime will fall.

“There’s a lot of brutality that the regime can do on the way out, and they’re going to be desperate,” he says. “There’ll be no holding back. But at the same time, everything is pointing towards their defeat.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.