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Myanmar's democratic holiday is truly over, and the dirty business of carving up the spoils of freedom between the country's elite classes, its landless peasants and foreign investors is about to begin.

The unpleasant reality of business politics must have been all too apparent to Aung San Suu Kyi when she arrived at the site of a copper project in the northwest of the country. The police there are accused of attacking local villagers, including Buddhist monks, with "phosphorous bombs," and at least 50 have been injured. The conflict erupted over claims by locals that the government confiscated land to make way for a $1-billion mining joint venture between a Myanmar military company and Norinco, a Chinese arms manufacturer.

It's interesting that when Ms. Suu Kyi offered to mediate between the parties, the opposition leader and Nobel Laureate did not immediately side with the protesters. Earlier, Ms. Suu Kyi gave warning that cancelling the deal with Norinco would mean compensating the Chinese for breach of contract. "If Burma [Myanmar] wants to stand up as a commensurate country with the international community, it must keep its promises."

Her mediation skills will be in high demand because the political relaxation since Ms. Suu Kyi's release from house arrest and election to parliament has stimulated a groundswell of protest. A third of Myanmar's people are landless peasants. Many among this vast and neglected population believe they have been robbed by the military and business elites and by foreign investors who profited during the military dictatorship. Isolated by UN sanctions and abandoned by companies, including Canada's Ivanhoe, which gave up control of its contentious copper mine there in 2007, Myanmar's generals turned to China for help. But the new friend from the north may have become as much a burdensome bully as a useful ally.

China has long coveted Myanmar, not just for its minerals, oil and gas, but also for its geography, which offers western China access to a sea port in South Asia. But for Myanmar, that embrace has proved to be a little too tight and the terms of trade too one-sided. Some ethnic Chinese living in the north of Myanmar have since the political transition come under attack and protests over land have erupted over other big industrial projects. A community of protesters is now targeting another Chinese project, a 790 kilometre pipeline linking gasfields in the Bay of Bengal with Western China.

It is more than likely that Myanmar's quixotic generals saw liberalisation as a useful way of weakening China's hold on their country. Ms. Suu Kyi will be entirely aware that her release had more to do with commercial pressures than human rights protest. This presents her with a huge dilemma. Myanmar's new government needs to appease the landless but at the same time the country is in desperate need of foreign investment and cannot afford to scupper billion-dollar projects.

In the state of Rakhine in western Myanmar, race riots have erupted as the Buddhist majority turn on the Muslim population. After protests from President Obama, the Myanmar government backed down from its plan to expel parts of the Muslim population to neighbouring Muslim states. Surprisingly, the leader of the opposition has been remarkably quiet about this burgeoning human rights crisis. She referred to it simply as an "international tragedy." Ms. Suu Kyi may be finding that it's much harder to stick rigidly to one's principles when one is caught in the balancing act between business and politics.

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