The Situation in Burma

Bill Peters
Chronicle Online Editor

The events of the last few weeks in Burma (Myanmar on most maps, though that name is only as old as the current junta) have evoked both hope and despair among all free peoples. The actions of the Buddhist monks that began and led the protests can only be characterized as heroic, and their continued defiance follows in the best tradition of man to oppose tyrants through non-violent action. That the junta in charge of the country ordered soldiers to open fire on them paints them further into the history of tyrants and evil men that have been the bane of humanity since we left the trees.

A majority of the monks have disappeared — taken at night from their pagodas by soldiers — but we can take solace in their sacrifice because they have called attention to the plight of their countrymen and have shown the junta to be weak. News reports at the time of publication say that for their stand they are being taken away from the capital (Rangoon) and put in prisons in the far north of the country. Four thousand monks are imprisoned, disrobed and shackled, and though reports are spotty, apparently a number of them have begun hunger strikes.

Though it is hard to be certain of the veracity of numbers and details of events in a banana republic like Burma, the basics of the events of the last few weeks are known. A few months back the price of food and fuel in Burma jumped up to 500%, rendering the impoverished nation even more so. Students and opposition party activists began protesting the price increases fairly immediately on August 15th, but were quickly dealt by the government. About a month later (September 23rd) the Buddhist monks began to demonstrate in the streets of Yangon, the capital formerly known as Rangoon, and those protests soon swelled in the days following. After a short period of governmental inaction, probably due to confusion over how to treat the monks, which are revered in Burmese society, the government began using lethal force to put down demonstrations. International reprisals have led to a UN special ambassador being dispatched who spoke with the general in charge and the main opposition leader.

The authorities continue to claim that there have only been thirteen deaths as a result of military action, but foreign diplomats as well as citizen journalists in the country that have taken grave risks to get information out place the number of dead at several times the official number. Among the dead is a Japanese photojournalist who may have been deliberately shot while videotaping military action against a protest.
It is the only nation on this Earth that continues to imprison a Nobel Prize winner — Aung San Suu Kyi, the winner of the country’s only election back in the early nineties and the paragon of pro-democracy non-violent action. The junta profits off the natural resources of country without a care for the people that live there, as was evidenced in leaked footage of the recent wedding of one of the senior Generals’ daughter. In a county with vast humanitarian crises, an economy that is easily the worst and most hopeless in the region, and various other insults to the right of the individual to economic self-determination; the daughter of that general had a wedding where she was dripping with enough jewels to feed the hungry of Burma for months. Especially in light of recent price increases in staples such as food and fuel the fact that these demonstrations are attempting to bring down the junta is hardly surprising.

What information did get out was through that great equalizer — the Internet. The generals are from an earlier era and were slow to recognize the threat that the images and accounts of the protests, and their violent suppression, posed. The images, especially those that suggest a Japanese photojournalist was shot deliberately, are polarizing and delineate in explicit detail the little respect that the junta has for human life, or rights.

One of the tragedies of the war in Iraq is that we can no longer use the threat of American force to bully tyrants into submission. If we had the forces, we could project our influence to protect those who through non-violent action will not protect themselves. But we do not, and we as Americans must hope and pray that others will step into the void that our fall from moral authority has left on the world stage. The thoughts, prayers, and meditations of the Chronicle staff are with those pro-democracy protesters in Burma, the Buddhist monks that led them before their imprisonment, and those outside and inside the country that are attempting to secure the blessings of liberty to the Burmese, who after the insults of their past leaders deserve it as much as any other man.