Sean Turnell and Myanmar: Did professor get old guard offside?

Sean Turnell was putting the finishing touches to a new economic plan for Myanmar when the military staged its coup last week.

Sean Turnell with his wife and fellow economist Ha Vu. Picture: Facebook

Sean Turnell was putting the finishing touches to a sprawling new economic plan for Myanmar from his hotel room in Yangon — one he hoped would help pull the country out of its pandemic-­induced recession — when the military staged its pre-dawn coup last week.

The Australian academic, a special economic adviser to the now-deposed civilian government, had believed that 2021 would be a key reform year for the Aung San Suu Kyi administration that was returned to office in a landslide victory last November.

A host of new economic reform bills were lined up to be tabled ­before the new parliament on February 1. Instead, the military seized power just hours before the opening session.

“My hope was that this would be the year people would finally think, ‘They’re doing something. They’re out of the cage’,” Professor Turnell had told The Australian. “We had so many reforms and new laws stacked up for ­debate. It would have made 2021 a real banner year.”

Protesters stand with a plastic cover to protect against police water cannon in Yangon. Picture: AFP

The widely respected economist is now himself behind bars, detained by coup leaders along with 170 senior government leaders, bureaucrats and MPs from the former ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, including deputy central bank governor Bo Bo Nge and other prominent economists.

Professor Turnell was taken on Saturday from Yangon’s Chatrium hotel, where he had been staying since his return to Myanmar three weeks earlier, to a local police station for questioning. He has not been seen since.

Friends say he was about to be picked up by Australian diplomats in Myanmar and evacuated when the military intervened.

There are fears he has since been transferred to Yangon’s ­Insein prison, notorious for its ­inhumane treatment of political prisoners under the former military junta.

One Myanmar-based Australian businessman who asked not to be named told The Australian that the junta’s treatment of ­Professor Turnell had alarmed many.

“The thing that’s really concerning us is that, usually, if they arrest foreigners they will be nice about it. People still believe he will be fine, and I certainly hope so, but if he is now in prison that’s a good indicator of how other foreigners will be treated.”

Applying pressure

The Australian government, and its embassy staff in Yangon, have been frantically negotiating for his release ever since, though Foreign Minister Marise Payne gave an ­indication of the difficulties faced this week when she spoke of the “extreme turn of events, an ­extreme change in circumstances in Myanmar”.

“We have tried to provide ­material comforts to him to support him” through his ordeal, Senator Payne said. “As you know, we called in the Myanmar ambassador to raise our concerns in relation to this. And we will continue to do that and press strongly for Professor Turnell’s release.”

Former Australian ambassador to Myanmar Nicholas Coppel told The Australian he believed both sides would be working towards getting Professor Turnell out of the country.

“I would think the military ­objective is to have him out of the country though why that’s the case is a bit puzzling,” he said.

“He is the world authority on the Myanmar financial system. He has written the definitive book on it and has provided techno­cratic guidance and advice for many years. He has done a host of good for the country and if the generals had any sense they would see that.” But his close association with deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest and incommunicado since Monday last week, had made him a target. There may be other factors too.

Protesters emerge from the plastic protection in Yangon. Picture: AFP

There has been speculation Professor Turnell’s arrest might not be unwelcome in Beijing, where he was perceived to have opposed the scale of a China-backed deep sea port and special economic zone development in conflict-torn Rakhine state.

The original $US7.3bn project, which was to be 85 per cent owned by China International Trust ­Investment Corporation (CITIC), was designed to give Beijing direct access to the Indian Ocean and allow its oil imports to bypass the Malacca Strait. It is a critical plank in China’s Belt and Road ­Initiative.

But the NLD government renegotiated a 30 per cent Myanmar share and a first-stage development worth a significantly ­reduced $US1.3bn. Professor Turnell described the revised project as “much more plausible for Myanmar’s use”.

His distraught family has begged for privacy this week as the government and embassy continues to press his case with a junta now facing intensifying international and domestic opposition, and likely to increasingly look to Beijing for support.

In a statement released on Tuesday, his wife Ha Vu — a fellow economist at Sydney’s Macquarie University where Professor Turnell holds an honorary position — described him as “warm and kind-hearted”, a man who ­“always thinks about others ­before himself”.

“Even now, wherever he is confined, we know that his thoughts and concerns are with those worrying about him,” she wrote.

TA policeman aims a gun during clashes with protesters in Naypyidaw. Picture: AFP

Setting out the agenda

The family says Professor Turnell is a “practical economist who has and will always use his expertise and experience for a good cause”. 

“Myanmar is a country with which he has fallen in love, and through working on and for it for more than two decades, he brought jobs, investment, and hope to many of the poorest people there without thought of reward or concern for his own advantage.” As a long-time economic policy adviser — first to Su Kyi, and then to her NLD government after its historic election victory in 2015 — Professor Turnell has played a key role in reforming Myanmar’s previously crony-racked business and banking sectors. He first met Suu Kyi in 2011, after the Nobel Peace laureate walked free from 15 years of house arrest in Myanmar for her non-­violent opposition to military rule.

He had been writing economic papers for the Myanmar government-in-exile for more than a decade, not knowing if his work was making its way into the hands of one of the world’s most famous political prisoners.

As it turned out, the BBC’s Burmese-language service had serialised Professor Turnell’s book, Fiery Dragons, which traced the unusually prominent role Myanmar’s banking and money-lending system had played in the country’s turbulent history.

Suu Kyi — a captive audience — had heard it all, and so it was to him she turned to for help getting her up to speed on mainstream economic thought, and on what foreign governments and multilateral agencies coming into newly opened Myanmar were seeking.

Making enemies

A decade later, friend and Myanmar analyst David Mathieson ­describes Professor Turnell as “one of the most popular foreigners in Myanmar”, and an economist who is “careful to stick to his lane”.

“What Sean was trying to do was clean up the Myanmar economy, clean up the banking system, create a better tax base with more accountability,” says Mathieson.

“All of these things, the military and their cronies were dead against. So I don’t think anyone should underestimate the threat that he and a group of Myanmar economists really posed to ­entrenched Myanmar interests.

“There was a subterranean struggle between the forces of crony corruption and the forces of economic transparency. What role that played in the coup will ­remain to be seen.”