[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 38 (Monday, March 1, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S909-S911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             FOREIGN POLICY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Now, on one final matter, last weekend brought 
disconcerting headlines for the supporters of freedom and democracy in 
Asia. In Burma the military junta's month-long coup turned bloody. 
Eighteen protesters have been murdered and at least a thousand civilian 
officials have been imprisoned on farcical grounds.
  In Hong Kong, China's puppet regime arrested 47 democracy advocates, 
including some who helped draw millions to the streets in peaceful 
protests in 2019, and are now holding them without bail.
  Unfortunately, in both places, this sort of repression has become a 
familiar part of life, and it could be a dark preview of developments 
elsewhere if the free world does not act.
  Even as Burma's civilian government made history in 2015, the 
military made clear it would keep using cronyism and constitutional 
manipulation to obstruct real popular control. In last year's election, 
the people overwhelmingly demanded true democracy and economic 
transparency, but that also raised the risk for those working publicly 
to make permanent reforms.
  The military's detention spree has hit Burma's civilian leaders, 
including people like Mya Aye, a longtime Muslim pro-democracy leader. 
It has also swept up some of the brightest economic reformers working 
to fight corruption and grow prosperity--brave men like Bo Bo Nge, who 
spent years locked away in Burma's Insein prison in the 1980s and 
1990s, built a successful life abroad, and returned to help the 
civilian government craft economic reforms.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this Washington Post 
article detailing Bo Bo Nge's story be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, March 1, 2021]

          An American Success Story Is Lost in Myanmar's Coup

                          (By Shibani Mahtani)

       Hong Kong.--Bo Bo Nge's path typified that of his 
     generation's brightest and bravest: Jailed as a student for 
     protesting Myanmar's military regime in 1988, he spent years 
     learning English from dictionary pages

[[Page S910]]

     smuggled into his Yangon cell. After his release and 
     continued persecution, he fled to the United States.
       He made a new life, rising from dishwasher to an economist 
     with a six-figure salary. But his heart never left Myanmar, 
     and armed with a Ph.D., he returned home as a democratic 
     transition took hold, leading to his appointment in 2017 as 
     deputy governor of the central bank--where he served 
     alongside others who fought for democracy three decades 
     earlier.
       Just after dawn on Feb. 1, five soldiers appeared at Bo Bo 
     Nge's home in Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw, and demanded he 
     come with them, according to his wife. She and his friends 
     have not heard from him since.
       Bo Bo Nge's fate, along with that of other intellectuals, 
     lawyers and young leaders detained in the military coup that 
     deposed Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government, once again 
     epitomizes dashed hopes for a better future in Myanmar. These 
     reformers and technocrats, whose skills and experience helped 
     salvage the country's antiquated financial system in recent 
     years, are now silenced and subject to the whims of 
     isolationist generals.
       In Myanmar coup, grievance and ambition drove military 
     chiefs power grab.
       At the same time, Myanmar's security forces are cracking 
     down on protesters, killing 18 on Sunday. More than 1,130 
     people, including Bo Bo Nge, have been arrested since the 
     coup.
       His predicament is made more urgent by his health issues 
     and the fragile state of Myanmar's economy, already battered 
     by the coronavirus pandemic. Banks have closed their doors as 
     hundreds of thousands of people, including tellers, resist 
     the coup by refusing to go to work, pushing the economic 
     system closer to collapse. The few military-linked banks that 
     remain open have restricted customer numbers, while the 
     central bank is limiting withdrawals across financial 
     institutions, raising fears of a cash shortage.
       ``When someone like Bo Bo arrived back in Myanmar, it was 
     like a bottle of water to a person in the desert,'' said Ba 
     Win, a former provost of Bard College at Simon's Rock, who 
     helped Bo Bo Nge move to the United States. Bo Bo Nge, he 
     added, ``had the intellectual training and discipline to look 
     at economic issues in a way that transcended parochial 
     political interests.''
       In an interview with Frontier magazine, Win Thaw, the 
     military's chosen replacement for Bo Bo Nge, accused 
     protesters and those participating in the civil disobedience 
     movement of ``destroying their own country's economy.''
       ``Policies differ from one government to another, but they 
     should have a common goal, which is to develop the country 
     and not trouble the people,'' he said. The military 
     government, he added, is ``doing their best.''
       Bo Bo Nge's first stint in detention was at Yangon's lnsein 
     prison, where he served more than four years for 
     participating in the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, which the 
     military regime brutally crushed. The sprawling complex is 
     one of the city's most visible landmarks, where behind 
     towering metal gates prisoners were subjected to torture and 
     other inhumane treatment. There, Bo Bo Nge's health began to 
     deteriorate, and his teeth rotted from neglect, friends and 
     family say.
       Locked up alongside academics and intellectuals, he was 
     exposed to lofty conversations about history, economics and 
     philosophy. He and his fellow prisoners would bury smuggled 
     English dictionary pages under the muddy floors of their 
     cells, studying them furiously when guards were not around. 
     By the time he was released in 1993, Bo Bo Nge was fluent, 
     and after a stint exporting taro stems harvested from 
     Myanmar's lnle Lake to South Korea, he moved to America's 
     lush, mountainous Berkshires, where he attended community 
     college.
       ``He was immediately helpful, kind and so good-natured,'' 
     said Marion Lathrop, 84, who hosted Bo Bo Nge with her 
     husband, Don, then a professor at Berkshire Community 
     College. ``It was kind of hard to grasp the fact that someone 
     with that nature could have gone through that kind of 
     ordeal.''
       Immediately, friends said, Bo Bo Nge got down to business, 
     acquiring a driver's license and a car to drive between his 
     odd jobs and college. In 2001, two years after his arrival, 
     he won a scholarship to Bard College, and after graduation, 
     he pursued a master's degree in economics at Johns Hopkins 
     University.
       Through those years, he maintained a long-distance love 
     with his future wife, Hnin Wai Lwin, better known by her 
     nickname Me Kyi, whom he met on lnle Lake at her shop where 
     she sold trinkets under a famed pagoda. Their international 
     calls were a source of entertainment for her village--where 
     residents could listen in on a central broadcast as phones 
     were scarce--before she joined him in Massachusetts seven 
     years after his departure, according to several friends.
       His first job was at a subsidiary of the American Institute 
     of Economic Research, where he eventually earned six 
     figures--epitomizing the American immigrant success story. 
     Colleagues were ``immediately struck by his brilliance,'' 
     said Seth Hoffman, now vice president of that subsidiary, 
     American Investment Services.
       ``Given his particular skill set, Bo Bo could have gone on, 
     if he was reoriented in a different direction, to be on a 
     bond desk in a major investment bank,'' Hoffman said. ``He 
     could have had a more comfortable life.''
       But Bo Bo Nge, heartened by a hopeful yet uncertain 
     military-led transition to democracy that began in 2010, 
     wanted to do ``something more than make money,'' according to 
     Ba Win. Inspired by a conversation the two had about a lack 
     of skilled leaders in Myanmar--the military shuttered its 
     best universities after the 1988 uprising and reopened them 
     only in 2014--Bo Bo Nge pursued a doctorate at the School of 
     Oriental and African Studies in London, where Suu Kyi was a 
     research student in the 1980s.
       When he went back to join the government as deputy central 
     bank governor in 2017, the military had ceded some control to 
     a civilian leadership and the economy was making great 
     strides. Poverty had been halved from a decade prior, growth 
     was picking up, and reformists were driving policy changes, 
     keeping down inflation and modernizing the central bank. In 
     the recent coup, several of Suu Kyi's leading economic 
     advisers were detained, including Australian economist Sean 
     Turnell, and Min Ye Paing Hein, a former World Bank economist 
     who was the deputy industry minister. None have been heard 
     from since they were taken by authorities.
       As the military tightens its hold on power and the prospect 
     of reconciliation grows dim, the European Union and other 
     Western countries are readying sanctions against Myanmar's 
     generals and their economic interests, following moves by the 
     United States.
       A general strike on Feb. 22, meanwhile, added momentum to 
     Myanmar's civil disobedience movement. Many taking part in 
     the resistance say sacrificing the economy is their only way 
     to bring down the junta and achieve democracy.
       Zaw Zaw, a 41-year-old garment factory owner in Yangon, 
     said he sold an apartment and his car to support those who 
     are forgoing a paycheck to participate in acts of 
     disobedience against military rule. Soon he will run out of 
     things to sell, he admits, but says he will do anything to 
     keep the resistance afloat.
       ``The country's economy was already in danger'' before the 
     coup, he said. ``Whether or not the generals hold an election 
     in a year as promised, the economy will collapse anyway. So 
     it is worthwhile to sacrifice everything to bring them 
     down.''
       Since her husband was taken on Feb. 1, Hnin Wai Lwin has 
     had trouble sleeping and has lost her appetite. Memories of 
     basic facts--when they arrived in the United States, her 
     husband's age--are fading or have become confused. She has 
     moved back to Shan state up north, away from the military-run 
     capital, Naypyidaw, for her safety and that of their 5-year 
     old son, who she said is always asking for his father, unable 
     to comprehend what has happened.
       She cannot stop thinking about the health of her husband, 
     who is in his 50s, and whether he has run out of the limited 
     supply of medicines she packed in a bag before he left with 
     the soldiers. In an interview, she said Bo Bo Nge was 
     suffering from gastrointestinal disease and hypertension, for 
     which he needs medical treatment.
       ``I am also not in good health, and we are not together,'' 
     she said. ``I am very sorry. We should be together, whatever 
     the circumstance.''
       Kyaw Ye Lynn in Yangon contributed to this report.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, even foreign nationals have been 
subjected to unjustified detention. The world is closely watching the 
case of Sean Turnell, an Australian scholar who has spent years helping 
Burma's civilian leaders unlock its economic potential.
  The administration has been right to condemn the junta and to consult 
with Congress on an appropriate response. But as Burma's protesters 
begin to pay the ultimate price for speaking out, the United States 
must make it clear that military and police officials will face 
crippling costs of their own. This should include the military-owned 
holding companies, which have deep roots in Burma's economy. It is time 
to lead an international effort to support the people of Burma.
  It is also time to strengthen our calls for an international response 
to China's shameless human rights abuses, beginning with Hong Kong. 
Another round of arrests in the last several days has sent a new wave 
of student activists to prison with no due process. They join veteran 
pro-democracy performers like my friends Martin Lee and Jimmy Lai, who 
were already rounded up.
  The United States cannot outsource our moral authority in championing 
democracy around the world. When we stay silent, the voice of the 
international community is channeled through forums where the most 
notorious human rights abusers preside over their own trials.
  The ironically named U.N. Human Rights Council boasts a membership 
including such paragons of virtue as the Russian Federation, which has 
begun sending residents to prison for non-state-sanctioned religious 
beliefs; and Venezuela, whose rap sheet the

[[Page S911]]

State Department spells out as ``arbitrary detention,'' ``forced 
disappearances,'' and ``extrajudicial killings''; and Cuba, whose 
government exports repressive tools to countries like Venezuela; and, 
of course, the People's Republic of China itself, where the hypocrisy 
stretches from repression in Hong Kong to internment and torture of the 
Uighur people in Xinjiang.
  The Biden administration has advertised a foreign policy focused on 
human rights and democracy and quite publicly announced its intention 
to rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council. Fine, let Burma and Hong Kong 
and Xinjiang and Belarus be tests of this administration's approach to 
the council. But the White House must not put much trust into this 
corrupted institution. We should be uniting like-minded democracies 
around actions that the United Nations panels are either unwilling or 
unable to take. With respect to Hong Kong, the prior administration 
took several concrete steps, from closing PRC investment loopholes in 
Hong Kong to opposing targeted sanctions.

  Now is the time for the Biden administration to show its resolve as 
it confronts serious tests of its own.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________