Myanmar: When the Window Closed

“There’s always been a Burma network in the Norwegian parliament,” says Ola Elvestuen. An MP for Norway’s Liberal Party since 2013, Elvestuen has devoted his political career to environmental and societal issues that affect us all. He served as Minister of Climate and the Environment from 2018 to 2020, and has held several high-ranking positions in local and parliamentary politics, including vice mayor of Oslo and vice chairman of the Liberal Party. As a young man in the late 1980s, he witnessed a rapidly shifting global landscape: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ousting of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and the 8888 Uprising in Myanmar. Since then, he has engaged with global challenges to promote peace, fairness, and sustainability, and has worked on issues involving Belarus, Iran, Eritrea, Tibet, Taiwan, and beyond. With authoritarianism on the rise, he believes countries like Myanmar are central to reversing this global trend. Looking back to Myanmar, Elvestuen recalls how the 1988 demonstrations and coup embedded the Burmese struggle deep into Norwegian politics and foreign policy. In 1992, the Norwegian Burma Committee (NBC) was established following Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel Peace Prize win the previous year, and around the same time the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) began broadcasting into the country from Oslo. Fast forward to 2021, and Elvestuen says the contrast could not be sharper. He argues the international community should have responded immediately—and forcefully—after the military seized power. Instead, he points to weak global media coverage and Western governments’ passive stance as reasons the crisis has escalated. “The demonstrations that were held were incredible,” he says, “but they did not get the support they should have gotten in the early days.” Elvestuen remains firm that the National League for Democracy (NLD) was the legitimate government following the 2020 elections, and that formal recognition of the National Unity Government (NUG)—by the UN and individual countries—should have happened immediately after the coup. That clarity of conviction is rooted not only in policy but in his own experience in Myanmar. In 2014, during its democratic opening, Elvestuen joined former Liberal Party leader Arne Fjørtoft on a trip focused on environmental cooperation. He remembers a beautiful country with friendly people, but also meeting families in extremely difficult circumstances. Together, they distributed solar panels to homes without electricity and planted mangrove trees in the Irrawaddy Delta—work Elvestuen still recalls fondly. CATCH THE PODCAST The post Myanmar: When the Window Closed appeared first on ENG.MIZZIMA.COM.