A kinder, gentler Burma: for the right price, Washington lobbyists can put a positive face on the most oppressive foreign junta.

• Author: Silverstein, Ken
• Position: Cover Story

For the right price, Washington lobbyists can put a positive face on the most oppressive foreign junta

Despite what many people think, lobbying is hard work. Consider, for instance, the heroic struggles of Jefferson-Waterman International, a D.C.-based firm whose legal efforts on behalf of the Burmese government make president Clinton's legal defense look like a piece of cake. For a mere $400,000 a year, Jefferson-Waterman undertakes to sweeten the reputation of Burma's military junta, the State Law and Order Council -- affectionately known as SLORC.

It's not an easy job, as one might infer from recent news stories concerning Burma's political activities. The State Department calls SLORC "a highly authoritarian military regime" whose security forces regularly terrorize the citizenry with extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. The SLORC keeps Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung Suu Kyi under a state of virtual house arrest and severely restricts her National League for Democracy (NLD) and other opposition parties. (This is necessary since the opposition swept national elections in 1990 with more than 80 percent of the vote, thereby leaving the SLORC, no choice but to annul the balloting.) SLORC is also complicit in the drug trade: Burma is the principal source of heroin that reaches American streets.

Now, many PR professionals would fold under the challenge of representing such a colorful client. Not the folks at Jefferson-Waterman. Among the many services its lobbyists -- including Ann Wrobleski, who served as assistant secretary of state for narcotics control under Reagan -- perform on behalf of the junta, Jefferson-Waterman launched an Internet newsletter, the Myanmar Monitor, whose stated purpose "is to provide a broad and balanced view of Burma." To fully appreciate the magnitude of this task, it is helpful to contrast the political and social developments in Burma since last May, when the Myanmar Monitor was inaugurated, with how those events were reported in the newsletter.

May - July 1997

Events in Burma:

In May, soldiers detain 36 opposition members and press eight into service as military porters in areas held by ethnic insurgents. One of the opposition members dies as a result. That same month, the SLORC arrests around 50 NLD supporters and detains hundreds more in order to prevent the opposition from gathering at Suu. Kyi's home to commemorate the seventh anniversary of its 1990 election victory.

In early June, opposition leader U...