The Myanmar regime and its crony bankers are using international law firms to “threaten” Australian economist Sean Turnell “into silence” by attempting to block the publication of his forthcoming book on the thwarted reform plans of Myanmar’s ousted civilian National League for Democracy (NLD) government, the former aide to detained State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said Friday.
The NLD government was led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, for whom Turnell worked as an economic advisor until his arrest— for allegedly possessing “state secret” information—days after the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup against the civilian government.
Turnell pleaded not guilty but a regime court in Naypyitaw sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment in September 2022. He was released in November of that year amid a junta amnesty “in consideration of bilateral relations and on humanitarian grounds”, the regime said at the time.
On Friday, he posted on Facebook that the Myanmar regime and its crony bankers are still coming after him, “this time using international law firms to threaten me into silence. Well, it didn’t work before, so….”
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Friday, the economist said he has a new book coming out soon on the reforms of the NLD era, titled “The Best Laid Plans”.
“That is what has stimulated the issue,” he said, while declining to provide more details “for legal reasons.”
“These people are very serious, the law firm concerned is formidable, and I cannot afford to fight them in the courts,” he said.
Turnell continued: “The whole thing is outrageous, of course. I intend to go on, but I cannot identify who these people are alas.” He declined to elaborate on exactly how the regime and its crony bankers were attempting to interfere with his latest project, or why.
The economist told The Irrawaddy on Friday that this was the second time those responsible have tried to silence him.
“They tried to stop ‘An Unlikely Prisoner’ too,” he said, referring to his Myanmar prison memoir published last year.
That book describes in very blunt terms the awful conditions of his imprisonment, the absurdity of his trial, and the injustice meted out to him and his Myanmar colleagues, as well as the plight of people who weren’t connected with his case, but whom he got to know about while in prison.
As an economic advisor, he helped Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s government plan reforms aimed at reviving Myanmar’s economy, which had been devastated by successive military regimes. With his Myanmar colleagues and experts, including detained deputy governor of the Central Bank of Myanmar U Bo Bo Nge, Turnell helped try to reform Myanmar’s financial system, fixing and cleaning it up so that banks could finally be productive institutions for Myanmar’s development, among other things.
Turnell told BBC Burmese in March that his upcoming book describes the reforms that the NLD government was preparing to implement when it was ousted, adding that the junta didn’t want this information to be revealed. The economist said he wanted to write the book to get the details on the record, adding that he was excited to tell people about them.
“But they heard about it [the new book], and acted ahead of it,” he told The Irrawaddy on Friday.
He told the BBC that the NLD’s reform plan could still be implemented once the military is no longer involved in Myanmar politics, as it remained practical and relevant.
He said the NLD’s agenda included a “Myanmar Economic Resilience and Reform Plan,” which Turnell and his colleagues prepared in 2020 as a recovery plan designed to help the economy rebound strongly from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the “daring” plan also included reviews and assessments of the advantages and disadvantages of what the NLD government had done for the economy in its first five-year term. The draft plan was completed on Jan. 31, 2021. The next day, the military staged the coup.
Since his release from prison in late 2022, Turnell has become a thorn in the regime’s side. In a thank you message to all those who had helped him, posted after his release, he said, “It is a tragic and terrible thing that the nicest people I have encountered anywhere are ruled over by such knaves and fools.”
In media interviews he warned that the coup had severely damaged Myanmar’s economy and that the regime wouldn’t give up power easily. He also revealed the inhumane treatment he experienced in prison along with other political detainees such as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he met during their trial proceedings and who urged him to tell everyone the truth about Myanmar.
The junta revoked its pardon of him in December 2022 for criticizing it in his media interviews and social media posts.
