US urged to release funds for Myanmar
The Australian former special economic adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi has urged the Trump administration to release Myanmar’s frozen reserve funds to help finance the democratic opposition.
The Australian former special economic adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, imprisoned for 21 months by the Myanmar junta that overthrew her elected government, has urged the Trump administration to release the country’s frozen reserve funds to help finance the democratic opposition.
Sean Turnell, an economics professor and world expert on the Myanmar economy, says releasing up to $US1 billion in Myanmar reserves, or the interest generated by those funds, could be the key to breaking the deadlock in an intractable conflict that continues to destabilise the region and foster transnational crime far beyond its borders.
Professor Turnell will travel to the US next month to petition senior Republican administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio who is on record condemning the February 1, 2021 military coup that ended Myanmar’s democratic experiment.
At the same time a trio of senior UN experts on Myanmar, including Australian human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti, will travel to Geneva under the banner of the Special Advisory Council on Myanmar to petition European officials on the issue.
Professor Turnell told the Weekend Australian more than a $US1 billion in Myanmar central bank funds was frozen by the New York Federal Reserve immediately after the coup d’etat that has plunged the country into civil war and economic crisis.
“Since then that money has just sat there. A big ask of the Burmese opposition is to release those funds, or use them in a creative way like in Ukraine where they use the interest generated to help fund the opposition,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s an impossible ask.”
The Myanmar resistance is now in control of more than half of the country’s territory and in contested control of another 20 per cent, making it the effective government and service provider for tens of millions of people whose lives and livelihoods have been up-ended by the conflict, said Mr Sidoti.
While the Biden administration rebuffed numerous petitions to release the funds, Professor Turnell said he hoped the Trump administration would be more receptive given the precedent set by the recent disbursement of Russian funds to Ukraine forces.
Republican Party luminaries such as Senator Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham have long been strident advocates for broader sanctions on the Myanmar junta and for the release of Professor Turnell and Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate who remains in junta custody. The 60 year old Sydney academic met with senior US Republican and Democratic officials during a trip to Washington in the wake of his November 2022 release.
The European Union has agreed to reallocate income generated by frozen Russian Central Bank funds to support Ukraine’s military capabilities and the country’s reconstruction, while the US approved a $US20 billion loan to Ukraine against the collateral on immobilised Russian Reserves residing in the Fed.
In 2022, the Biden administration also allowed half of the $US7 billion in Afghanistan Central Bank funds frozen by the Fed after the Taliban seized power to be disbursed through a Board of Trustees to approved projects benefiting Afghan people.
Four years after the military seized power in Myanmar, the country is in economic free fall with close to half of the population living below the poverty line and at least 15 million facing acute food insecurity.
The Southeast Asia nation has become a hub of transnational criminal enterprise; one of the world’s largest producers of opium, heroin and methamphetamines and a global centre for online scam operations and human trafficking.
The civil conflict continues to escalate sharply with the junta now almost entirely reliant on Russia and China for the advanced weaponry it routinely turns against its own people.
Democratic opposition forces made up of former students, farmers, civil servants and professionals, backed by ethnic-armed groups that have long fought the Burmese state for autonomy, meanwhile rely largely on crowdsourced funding and homemade weapons to battle the military.
“The only advantage the junta has over the opposition forces which outnumber them and now hold more territory than them is the junta’s access to advanced weaponry and air-delivered munitions which requires foreign exchange,” Professor Turnell said.
“By allowing democratic opposition access to greater funding you help redress the imbalance towards the opposition at a critical time.”
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