Burma's saffron revolution

[Moshe..]

Myanmar

On the brink
Sep 27th 2007 | BANGKOK AND YANGON
From Economist.com

The people rise up against the junta


THERE are reckoned to be 400,000 monks in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), about the same as the number of soldiers under the ruling junta’s command. The soldiers have the guns. The monks have the public’s support and, judging from the past fortnight’s protests, the courage and determination to defy the regime. But Myanmar’s tragic recent history suggests that when an immovable junta meets unstoppable protests, much blood is spilled.

In the last pro-democracy protests on this scale, in 1988, it took several rounds of massacres before the demonstrations finally subsided, leaving the regime as strong as ever. By Thursday September 27th, with a crackdown under way, and the first deaths from clashes with security forces, it seemed hard to imagine that things would be very different this time

The latest round of protests began last month, after the government suddenly imposed drastic fuel-price rises. At first, the demonstrations were fairly small. It looked as if the protests might fizzle until soldiers fired over the heads of monks demonstrating in the central town of Pakkoku. The clergy demanded an apology, setting a deadline of September 17th. The next day, their demand having been ignored, they took to the streets.

At first, the regime’s forces stayed out of sight. On September 22nd, a group of monks and laymen was allowed to pray outside the normally heavily guarded home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) and icon of Myanmar’s struggle for democracy. Miss Suu Kyi’s public appearance—her first since she was detained four years ago—proved a boon to the demonstrators. On Monday the protest in Yangon, Myanmar's main city, was said to be 100,000-strong.

That night the regime broke its silence. On state television and radio, it warned of unspecified action “according to the law” if protests continued. The next day the protesters defied the threat, staging a demonstration at least as big as Monday’s. Soon after that march ended, troops and riot police moved into positions around Yangon. On Wednesday the authorities announced a two-month night-time curfew and troops surrounded monasteries in the city. But swarms of protesters again poured on to the streets, defying tear-gas, warning shots and baton charges. The first deaths, including of monks, were reported. On Thursday, troops burst into monasteries around the country to make arrests but, again, this did not stop monks and laymen from hitting the streets, where riot police shot at them.

The regime may be trying to calibrate its response to the protests, using limited force at first to quell opponents. That said, it still has elite disciplined units which would be unlikely to flinch if ordered to open fire on unarmed monks and nuns. If there are any cracks in the junta’s unity, nobody outside knows about them.

Myanmar’s junta has survived in part through diplomatic triangulation. Like North Korea, it has borne isolation and rhetorical hostility from the West by cosying up to the neighbours, notably China. And it has tried to avoid total subservience to any one of these by playing them off against each other.

As in the past, the world’s initial response to the junta’s violence was marked by bickering and point-scoring. On September 27th, the United Nations Security Council met in response to pressure from the West for co-ordinated sanctions. But Russia and China argued that the unrest was an internal matter that should not be on the council’s agenda at all. America announced new sanctions against the regime, in keeping with a policy some Western countries have pursued for nearly two decades. They are cheered on by a vocal and well-organised exile movement, and, when she was able to make her views known, by Miss Suu Kyi herself. Her heroic stature has helped make Myanmar a fashionable cause.

Shareholder-activists and ordinary consumers in the West have also done their bit to encourage a boycott. But isolation has never really been on the cards. Any gap is eagerly filled by Myanmar’s neighbours—not just China, but also India and Thailand and other members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). American leaders have insisted the junta honour the 1990 election result, won by Miss Suu Kyi’s NLD, and step aside. To this end, they have already imposed wide-ranging sanctions. The European Union has been more equivocal, and its sanctions correspondingly milder. Japan, Burma’s biggest aid donor until 1988, has been softer still.

If any countries can sway the junta they are the regional ones: ASEAN, especially Thailand; India; and above all China. China has given the junta diplomatic support, helping for years to keep its behaviour off the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. But Myanmar is far from a client state. This week Chinese spokesmen called for restraint in responding to the protests. Their pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Even if pressure both from within and beyond Myanmar's borders causes the regime to crumble, the country's troubles would still be daunting. Many of the ethnic minorities continue to distrust the majority “Burmans”, even including the democrats. And the NLD has been gutted by years of oppression. Miss Suu Kyi, inspiring figure though she is, is an untested leader who has perforce been woefully out of touch with events.

As in 1988 and 1990 the Burmese people have shown they want to choose their own leaders. In the past they did not fully reckon on the ruthlessness of the people they were up against. One day, as with all tyrannies, Myanmar’s will fall. But much blood may flow before that day dawns.

Revolution in Myanmar

The saffron revolution
Sep 27th 2007
From The Economist print edition

If the world acts in concert, the violence should be the last spasm of a vicious regime in its death throes
“FEAR”, the lady used to say, “is a habit.” This week, inspired in part by the lady herself, Aung San Suu Kyi, partly by the heroic example set by Buddhist monks, Myanmar's people kicked the addiction.

Defying the corrupt, inept, brutal generals who rule them, they took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to demand democracy. They knew they were risking a bloody crackdown, like the one that put down a huge popular revolt in 1988, killing 3,000 people or more. In 1988 Burma's people were betrayed not just by the ruthlessness of their rulers, but also by the squabbling and opportunism of the outside world, which failed to produce a co-ordinated response and let the murderous regime get away with it. This time, soldiers are once again shooting and killing unarmed protesters (see article). Can the world avoid making the same mistake twice?


In New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Western leaders, led by George Bush, harangued the junta, and threatened yet more sanctions. They have probably already shot their bolt. Western sanctions have been tried and have failed, in part because Myanmar's neighbours have for years followed a different approach. Its fellow members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations waffled about “constructive engagement” while making economic hay in Myanmar from the West's withdrawal. India, too, anxious about China's growing influence, and hungry for oil and gas, has swallowed its democratic traditions and courted the generals.

Comrades-in-arms
China itself has built an ever-closer relationship. The two countries, after all, have a lot in common beyond a shared border. Since the 1980s a wave of “people-power” revolutions has swept aside tyrannies around the world. Mercifully few regimes, and few armies, are willing to kill large numbers of their own people to stay in power. Two big exceptions have been Myanmar and China, whose government in 1989 likewise stayed in power through a massacre.

Yet it is China that now offers the best hope the outside world has of changing Myanmar for the better. Admittedly, it is a thin hope. There are plenty of reasons to doubt China's willingness to upset Myanmar's generals. China's traditional posture, heard again this week, is to oppose any “interference in the internal affairs of another country”. It trots out this formula so often when foreigners criticise its own behaviour that, even if it supports change, it is hard for it to utter more than platitudes, as it has this month, about the desirability of a “democracy process that is appropriate for the country”.

China has also been the chief beneficiary of the partial Western boycott. Myanmar offers two of the prizes China values most in its foreign friends: hydrocarbon resources and a friendly army, willing to give it access to facilities on its coast on the Bay of Bengal. China has become the junta's biggest commercial partner and diplomatic supporter.

Nevertheless there are two reasons why China might now see its own interests as best served by assisting a peaceful transition in Myanmar. The first is that China wants stability on its borders, and it is becoming obvious that the junta cannot provide it. The generals' economic mismanagement has helped reduce a country blessed with rich resources to crippling poverty. Fleeing economic misery as much as political oppression, up to 2m migrants from Myanmar are in Thailand. And it was an economic grievance—a big, abrupt rise in fuel prices—that sparked the present unrest.

The junta has at least succeeded in cobbling together ceasefire agreements with most of the two dozen armed insurgencies lining its borders. But the price has been lawless zones where banditry and illegal-drug production are rife. Myanmar's slice of the “Golden Triangle” on its Thai and Lao borders was for a while in the 1990s the world's dominant heroin producer. It has been largely priced out of that market by Afghan competition. But it has successfully diversified into methamphetamines. The business relies on precursor chemicals coming from China, but, just as heroin from Myanmar brought China addiction and, through shared needles, HIV and AIDS, so “ice” can wreak havoc. Nobody expects any transition to democracy to be trouble-free. But, Chinese leaders must be asking themselves, can it be any worse?

Appealing to the Olympic spirit
China must also be wondering nervously how all this will affect next year's Olympic games in Beijing. Already, protests about China's support for the government of Sudan, larded with comparisons to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, have shown that its foreign policy as well as its human-rights record at home is under scrutiny. Myanmar is justifiably a popular cause in the West. If China proves actively obstructive to international efforts to bring the junta to book, it may provoke calls for a boycott of the games.

It is of course wrong to assume that China can dictate to Myanmar. In the generals' deluded world-view, only they can preserve Myanmar's independence. They will take orders from no other country. China's role is crucial, nonetheless. It must not blunt the impact of measures taken by other countries and provide the junta with a shield to fend off demands to do what it should.

That, at least, is easy to prescribe. It should stop shooting protesters; free all political prisoners, including Miss Suu Kyi; scrap the constitutional guidelines drawn up by its farcical “national convention”; and start serious talks with all groups, including Miss Suu Kyi and her party. The aim of those talks should also be clear: to arrange a transition to civilian, democratic rule. For their part, provided free and fair new elections are held, Miss Suu Kyi and her party should not insist on the results of the election they won in a landslide in 1990 being honoured. And, unpalatable as it is, they should offer the generals whatever incentive they need to go quietly. This all sounds a pipedream. It will certainly remain so if the outside world does not unite around a set of demands, and agree on the sticks and carrots that might make deaf old soldiers listen.

www.economist.com

Photographer's last seconds caught on film
Leo Lewis in Tokyo
Footage capturing the last, terrible seconds of Kenji Nagai’s life has been shown on Japanese television, horrifying a nation and raising official suspicion that the 50-year-old journalist was murdered by Burmese troops. The shaky, indistinct moments of footage appear to show Nagai, who was in a crowd of demonstrators, shoved violently to the ground by a soldier and shot dead at point-blank range.

The crowd flees, leaving behind a visibly agonised figure believed to be Nagai on his back in the street. In his right hand is a video camera.

A loud crack is audible as a soldier points his rifle at the supine figure before launching himself at the dispersing crowd of protesters.

A doctor at the Japanese Embassy in Burma confirmed that a bullet entered Nagai’s body from the lower-right side of his chest, pierced his heart and exited from his back.

The footage, Japanese experts say, contradicts the official Burmese explanation of Nagai’s death, that he was killed by a “stray bullet”.

Western politicians have also cast doubt on official estimates which suggest that only nine people have been killed in recent days. “I am afraid we believe the loss of life is far greater than is being reported,” Gordon Brown said yesterday.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2554727.ece

The burmese government is not behaving very nicely. I used to live as a kid for a few months opposite the burmese embassy in london. I should probably show my solidarity with the monks by doing some illicit graffiti on their front door.

You have my blessing.

[Moshe..]

China is a big nuisance because they love backing up all these silly regimes like north-korea, burma and sudan - although even the chinese won't support iran.

[Captain Beefheart]

The tragedy Aung San Suu Kyi's repression is the greatest outright crime against both human rights and democracy in recent world history, but is shed no light by the media(apart from the UK in recent weeks) and the military government has received no repercussions by either western or eastern powers except for some polite requests to cease i' ts violations. Those have obviously been ignored, and it appears more and more that a repeat of the 1988 government-sponsored civilian massacre will occur.

The world community (i.e. the United States) needs to start living up to it' s responsibilities as global citizens and halts these atrocities. If the developed world truly cared about human rights, they'd step in and at the very least promote peace.

[Jocasta]

Originally Posted by Captain Beefheart

The tragedy Aung San Suu Kyi's repression is the greatest outright crime against both human rights and democracy in recent world history, but is shed no light by the media(apart from the UK in recent weeks)

Really? The US media hasn't covered this?

Originally Posted by Captain Beefheart

The world community (i.e. the United States) needs to start living up to it' s responsibilities as global citizens and halts these atrocities. If the developed world truly cared about human rights, they'd step in and at the very least promote peace.

Amen. And maybe for once the UK could lead Bush into action.

[Captain Beefheart]

The mainstream media in America probably doesn't have much interest in projecting/distorting Burma since there's no political, economical gain. So it probably ends as a footnote, just to rally a peace sentiment. And don't get me started on sanctions by the G8. Sanctions do NOT work, and more to the point they're horribly abused. They affect the civilian population much more intensely than the "regime" or junta in this case, and are hugely counterproductive. When subjected to sanctions, people begin to see the UN and the "West" as the enemy.

This is very straightforward: when the US hypes up on a country being a "threat", they usually mean that they aren't toing the neoliberal economic and political line, and have to be punished. Burma doesn't benefict the US at all since there is no threat. Hell the Ol' buffon sitting on 1200 Pennsylvania Ave probably couldn't locate the source of the smoking gun.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/...lame_game.html

The Guardian and the Independant are great papers and all, but I pretty much have a good idea what Palast or Monbiot is going to say before they say it editorially, and I don't know if thats good. I like what they're saying, because it's close to how I'd cover the story, but again, when it comes to the information you consume, I don't know that being inside your comfort zone is a good thing, it turns off your critical thinking.

Often times I feel the same of CNN, about stories that seem too good to be true, like the American people were asking for them.

Because they were, and focus groups are telling their news writers exactly that.

[Moshe..]

Cnn have covered the story far more than any channel in britain. American news is highbrow and cosmopolitan compared to the parochial stuff we get in france and italy which must always involve a studio containing topless dancing and talking rabbits. British media was clever in the 1950s, but decline has been most severe indeed. Afterall, the bbc persisted in calling the boxing-day-tsunami a 'quake-wave'. They don't place much faith in the vocabulary of the average britain, or in the dignity of the english soul.

Quake-Wave

As for the content of your anti-american ranting - you sound like a traditional homeless bag-lady.

[Captain Beefheart]

Katie Couric is the highest paid journalist in America. That should tell you enuff about their level of journalism or lack off. The message is losing credibility to the point where networks have people reporting on CNN about what's happening in the "blogosphere". The line between punditry and journalism is really so blurred at this point that it's almost nonexistent. The corporate sponsored yellow journalism biasing the news isn't that hard to grasp, unless you're leaning on the wrong side of the fence.. An excellent example of this is how Pulitzer and Hearst got the US involved head first in the SpanishAmerican war by fabricating the cause of the USS Maine sinking. (archeological findings show it was the steam engine exploding) but the major newspapers ran with the story about how it was attacked by Spain, and now you have Cuba and the Phillipeans as colonies.

Oh, wait a second. Scratch Cuba.

As for your pro american agenda, well i'm not surprised, England after all is America's lab dog. Sit down, stand up. So while you'll likely go to sleep blessing the Queen of England, i'll continue my mudane, banal daily routine of gambling 1-2% of my income on football and basketball. Granted, it doesn't quite all add up to $1.8 Billion I'd spending legalizing online gambling. But hey, not all of us can't be winners right? Sum of us just settle for taking pictures of automobiles we'd never own.

[Moshe..]

You’re evidently a nice and innocent young american-latino or latin-american boy who has yet to experience the reality of non-american cultures and climes (such as those of europe). Now, we’ve had enough fantasising: you first experience the real world, and then we can talk.

For example italy, where the discussion of the latest trends in the fabric used for the bikini bottoms of the beach girls of liguria, or for the lake girls of lombardy, will take infinite precedence over any mere earthquake or famine in africa, and where it is custom for presenters to attempt stand-up impressions of political leaders in-between putatively-serious news-reports – news-reports which are traditionally accompanied by swedish pop music. Or france, where the highest-brow political discussion show on television consists of ignorant and hysterical studio audience members claiming that e.g. you’re safer in a nigerian hospital than with an english doctor, or similar nonsense involving talking puppets, and where summertime news broadcasting is so often presented from their beaches and all about their beaches. Now, obviously the parisian newspapers also contain some of the best written journalistic jottings on earth, but the subject matter is usually parochial, with international coverage almost entirely derivative on the original explorational forays of anglophone reporters, mainly americans.

As an undergraduate, I frequented the most venerable political debating club in the world. Alongside our trusty copies of the telegraph, the times, le figaro and economist ect, we would also make sure to stock up on the new york times, chicago tribune, washington post, new york review of books, wall street journal and la times. We would typically have cnn, not the bbc, on our television screens. Journalism, especially written journalism (although their television coverage is also excellent and diverse), is the great american forte, and their diversity of available journalistic opinion far surpasses that of any other society. Americans write very good and very sophisticated journalism, if not very good/sophisticated literature (interestingly, their best literature reads like journalism). Most of the modern forms and styles of journalism are american inventions. I won’t go on.

As for your pro american agenda, well i'm not surprised, England after all is America's lab dog. Sit down, stand up. So while you'll likely go to sleep blessing the Queen of England, i'll continue my mudane, banal daily

A village-idiot cliché and disclaimer or signing post of ignorance - yes. But is it an instant disqualifier from all serious conversation and consideration? I am nice so will give you the benefit of the doubt.

I love you, Moshe.

[Moshe..]

I don't know - I feel like a bit of a bully after I write posts like that! But internet is no fun without arguments.

We need our solo1 back for the genuine shooting fish in a barrel argumentative experience (albeit very charming irish fish!).

Just the same.

[Moshe..]

Solo1 is the one thing missing in my life and my soul. I wonder what has happened to the boy. Very mysterious.

[Captain Beefheart]

You’re evidently a nice and innocent young american-latino or latin-american boy who has yet to experience the reality of non-american cultures and climes (such as those of europe). Now, we’ve had enough fantasising: you first experience the real world, and then we can talk.

Spanish people are "iberoamericans", close in semantics, but then again maybe not. Patronizing others on ther internet is just a shame and it's tickling my diareah reflex, especially when you've lived a sheltered life yourself. What you sent 20 pounds to sum ethopian kid you'll never meet or care much for that matter apart from self construct altruism, the f!uck outta here.

Italy is filled with sensationalism and yellow press journalism, not far different from what the average english homeboy has been accostumed to for the last century.

Originally Posted by Captain Beefheart

Patronizing others on ther internet is just a shame and it's tickling my diareah reflex

.. says the pot to the kettle.

[Captain Beefheart]

I'm a jester at the end of the day. Meaning don't get upset because i'm not going to bat for your team on every single issue which is rather silly on your part.

Moshe knows as well as I do he doesn't care about Iraqi people, if it makes him feel better at night, peaches and cream, and if he behaves, the boogey won't get hm. Hell even Greenspan took off the reptile mask last week and addmited the war was about oil, it's an oversimplication of the subject, but whatever. Rather odd how he didn't add that it's also about privatized contracts of weapons, security, and later rebuilding a destroyed country. But he's a globalist, so I guess it's not that odd.

As for for Burma, the forecast isn't very optimistic for the monks, if we are led to believe Bush is stupid enuff to seek war with Iran.

Yes, you have used that excuse once before, especially when defeated. But that's OK. If you want to pass as the fool, by all means.

Moshe, as I remember, Solo is now within the county of Los Angeles or Orange, but not quite sure which city, perhaps Thousand Oaks or Pasadena.

[Captain Beefheart]

I don't self victimize myself over my nationality. You'd find that type of behavior is more common with brits than spanish(and if you take a look at history you'd understand why).

Neither do I feel bullied or encouraged to post my credentials as a way to man up another poster over a debate, or feel the need to spew half assed assumptions based on written text unless they were laced heavily with cynicism and brutal wit(and not of the Mr.Bean kind). I think that even the blondest, Lincoln Navigator driving, knocked-up by some doctor in the suburbs soccer mom feels complete sympathy for Moshe. He's a gentleman and bipolar.

Neither do I feel bullied or encouraged to post my credentials as a way to man up another poster over a debate, or feel the need to spew half assed assumptions based on written text unless they were laced heavily with cynicism and brutal wit(and not of the Mr.Bean kind).

You will spew half-assed gibberish for the sake of jest. I get it.

[Moshe..]

So our friend has traded his computer for a surf board. I’d have imagined san fran or manhattan would be more his style, aspiring culture-vulture that he was. He must have been kidnapped by a statuesque californian amazon. Speaking in irish has its hazards.